Zambia Maize Marketing and Processing

1.Zambia Maize Marketing

Maize is the most important staple crop in Zambia. Its planting area and production volume is far greater than those of other crops. Smallholders account for 79% of maize production in the country. Other staple crops include cassava, sweet potato, sorghum and millet. Cassava is cooked directly, or floured before cooking as with maize, sorghum and millet.

Based on a nationwide survey conducted and some observations on the cropping pattern and income sources of smallholders. First, household of approximately 80% has produced the maize as a staple food; importance of this crop has outstanding in terms of the number of growers, groundnuts(42%) and cassava(39%) is next in line, followed by sweet potato(19%) and sorghum(10%). Looking at the composition of income for all households by crop, cereals including maize have the largest share with 35%, followed by roots and tubers with 18%. Thus, it has been found that maize is the most important crop both in terms of the number of growers and share in household income.

As compared with other staple crops (cassava, sweet potato, sorghum), maize is more susceptible to drought, and its production may be hit substantially by bad weather. Furthermore, inputs such as chemical fertilizer and improved seeds are essential for realizing a high yield. Sufficient maize production is simply impossible without those inputs. As the government liberalized the distribution of products and inputs and scaled down subsidy programs in the 1990s, the process of inputs rose, and the producer price of maize declined, in remote areas. Thus, the farther a farmer lives from the capital, the less favourable is the condition for producing and selling maize.

The planting area and production for major food crops present a growth. While the growth for staple grains including maize was minimal, considerable production growth was achieved for cassava and sweet potato. This may be explained by the following factors:(1)the improvement of productivity for roots and tubers thanks to the diffusion of improved varieties; and (2) the shift of production from maize to cassava and other crops, particularly in remote regions of northern Zambia, as a result of rising chemical fertilizer prices due to the scaling-back of the subsidy program.

The Zambian government has been focusing its attention on the emergence of cassava in recent years as a supplementary crop to maize. The advantages of cassava may be found in: greater resistance to drought as compared with maize and adapt ability to poor soil conditions; little requirement of inputs including chemical fertilizer; high potential for processing (cassava flour, chips, starch, etc.); the possibility of levelling on -farm consumption (avail ability in necessary quantity at any time) as the harvest does not concentrate on a short period of time; the potential of cassava meal as additional ingredient of the staple food, which eliminates the necessity of changing the traditional diets. However, cassava also has some disadvantages. For example, ot requires a long period of growth before harvest (9-24 months), causing a competition with other crops for space where land is scarce. The bitter varieties require detoxification, which in turn requires the knowledge of relevant techniques. Its quality deteriorates rapidly after harvest. Also, casssava is more “bulky” than maize, causing more difficulties in transport or processing.

In light of their resistance to drought, sorghum and millet are also considered as potential alternatives to maize. As with cassava, they have advantages over maize in requiring less chemical fertilizer and lower costs for production. However, they cannot be expected to replace maize as staple food because of their inferiority in taste. They also have the disadvantage of longer growth periods, except for improved varieties.

2. Zambia Maize Processing Industry

In most cases, maize is floured and then boiled in hot water until it thickens like dough for eating. This traditional staple dish, known as nsima or nshima, is put on the table almost at every meal in Zambia and Malawi. Kenya and Uganda also have a similar staple called ugali. For this reason, maize milling has been performed in extensive areas of Southeast Africa using various techniques. Maize meal, known as “mealie meal” in Zambia, is largely classified into the first-grade breakfast meal and the second-grade roller meal.Both of those maize meal products are processed in large plants and supplied to urban consumers. In rural areas, maize meal is mostly processed with small milling machine known as hammer mills. It is less expensive for rural people to bring maize grains produced on-farm or purchased at the market and have it milled by a hammer miller, than to purchase a commercially produced product. This practice has spread rapidly nationwide since the mid-1990s, when the government withdrew its price support programme for maize meal, effectively raising its retail prices.

Zambia has 35 maize milling companies (as of 2007), which are involved in a fierce competition. In addition, about 7,000 hammer mills are reportedly registered in rural areas. In this highly competitive environment, no company has a commanding market share in the milling industry. The share of the leading company, National Milling Corporation Ltd. (NMC) is estimated to be only 22%.

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