Rising maize flour prices challenge to food security

The cost of a 2kg packet of maize flour has shot up by 25 per cent, from between Sh90 and Sh95 in January to March to between Sh110 and Sh115 depending on the brand.

This means that for every packet of maize, middlemen are sharing Sh45, which is a huge amount going into undeserving pockets in comparison to what farmers are getting for their hard work.

The Parliamentary Agriculture Committee chairperson, Adan Mohamed Noor, moved in to try and rectify the situation by bringing all players in the sector together to assess the validity of maize shortage claims.

His discovery was that the country was only experiencing an artificial shortage that had nothing to do with lack of sufficient stocks.

His findings pointed to maize millers who were conspiring with flour traders to push up the prices of maize flour by small, unnoticeable, margins.

The fact that Government had also released one million bags through the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) and only 300,000 bags were bought by millers was another indicator.

According to the Economic Survey 2016, the value of marketed maize shrunk by 11.4 per cent from Sh9.6 billion in 2014 to Sh8.5 billion last year mainly due to lower prices paid to farmers. But this problem is projected to continue if the cartels are not put in check.

Many farmers are now turning to other crops that can give them returns. Further, rain-fed agriculture has become tricky due to changing weather patterns; hence farmers have resolved to venture into dairy production.

As such, creation of markets for the farmers is the surest way to destroy cartels.