Q FM Africa's Modern Radio
The Centre For Trade Policy And Development (CTPD) has called on the food reserve agency (FRA) to urgently give its full position on maize procurement and availability of storage facilities and space in this marketing season.
And the centre has urged the food reserve agency to limit its purchase of maize to the current storage capacity so as to avoid maize going to waste due to lack of sheds and storage facilities and space.
CTPD trades and development researcher Emmanuel Muma says the centre has noted with concern that hundreds of bags of maize belonging to small scale farmers are going to waste at some named food reserve agency (FRA) depots in various districts due to lack of proper warehouses or sheds.
Mr. Muma has disclosed that a close check by the centre across the country reveals that most FRA storage facilities including silos are in a deplorable state and do not have adequate modern technological equipment to maintain cleanliness, temperature, and humidity.
He has since urged government to immediately conduct an analysis of FRA’s storage capacity, including the state and conditions of the storage structures, limit FRA’s crop purchases to its capacity accordingly and allow the private sector to mop out extra grain and construct more storage facilities to bridge the gap and maintenance of the existing storage structures and ensure that they are equipped with modern technological facilities.