• Small scale farmers do not get the real price of their farm produce.
• Farmers are being exploited by briefcase buyers.
• Sustainable and factor reflective marketing system is key to economic sector growth.
A Development Activist has called on government to consider reviewing the current agriculture marketing and trading arrangements to assess whether the system is permitting the growth and self-sustainability of the sector.
Wesly Miyanda told Money FM News that the agriculture sector is faced with numerous man made setbacks in terms of pricing system which does not seem to support farmers.
Mr. Miyanda noted that small scale farmers do not get the real price of their farm produce compared to the prices of farming inputs which are unreasonably high.
He said a sustainable and factor reflective marketing system is key to economic sector growth and development and can easily help the country attain total economic stability.
“Zambia is running on a liberalized kind of economy where the manufacturers and Producers of commodities themselves are the main determiners of the pricing system, but which is not the case with the agriculture sector. Worse still, the whole system is corrupt in the sense that small scale farmers do not get the real price of their farm produce as compared to the prices of farming inputs which are just too unreasonably high,” Mr. Miyanda said.
Mr. Miyanda further observed that small scale farmers are being exploited by briefcase buyers who are buying agriculture produce at cheap prices and sell at high prices to Millers or manufacturers.
“What we are seeing at play is total exploitation of our hard-working farmers by briefcase Businessmen and women who are going round to buy farm produce at cheap prices and sell the same at high prices for their own benefits,” he noted.
