Food crisis looms as maize stocks at grain reserve enough for 18 days
National Cereals and Produce Board managing director Newton Terer. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
The current stocks of 1.8 million bags are sufficient to meet Kenyans maize needs for 18 days and the reserve will drop further once millers buy 900,000 bags kept for them to help curb the runaway flour prices.
Kenya’s strategic grain reserves will fall to less than a million 90-kilogramme bags of maize, about four million bags less than are needed to cushion the country from food shortages.
The current stocks of 1.8 million bags are sufficient to meet Kenyans maize needs for 18 days and the reserve will drop further once millers buy 900,000 bags kept for them to help curb the runaway flour prices.
This means the State will turn to imports should it need maize for relief purposes given the weakened position of the grain reserves held at the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB).
“As far as we are concerned there is no looming food crisis in the country since the uptake by the millers over a period of two weeks is not as much,” said managing director Newton Terer.
Traditionally, the NCPB starts buying maize from farmers from October when the harvest seasons start to replenish stocks.
But shortage of funds after the Treasury delayed disbursement of cash to the board pushed the the buying to December.
The Planning ministry owes the grains reserve Sh6.8 billion for borrowing 3.8 million bags of maize for relief and fighting the effects of drought, further hurting Kenya’s efforts to ensure food security.
The urgency to replenish the strategic grain reserves is underlined by the announcement from the Ministry of Agriculture that poor rainfall would cut this year’s maize harvest by 4.6 million bags in a drop that will hurt farmers’ earnings and spark an increase in prices of the grain.
Food security report indicates that maize yields will this year fall to 32.2 million bags, down from the 36.8 million bags harvested in 2015, reflecting a 12 per cent drop.
A poor crop for Kenya’s staple food is set to exert pressure on inflation on high maize prices, cripple the milling plants and hit the government budget because of imports of the grain to ease the forecast shortage.
Reduced maize crop will expose Kenyans to surging prices and jerk inflation that has remained in the single digit range and within government targets.
The price of two-kilogramme packet of maize flour crossed Sh100 in April, with millers attributing the rise to increased cost of the raw material resulting from an acute grains shortage.
The price of a two-kilogramme packet of Jogoo is retailing at Sh110 from Sh95 in March, while Soko and Pembe are also up by Sh15.
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