BUSINESS MAVERICK: OP-ED: Zimbabwe’s maize experiment: Who will be the winners?

that the Zimbabwean government has banned sales of maize by farmers to anyone other than the government’s Grain Marketing Board. This will be at a prescribed price, which we do not know at this point. This move follows a poor harvest after another season of unfavourable weather conditions, which has left Zimbabwe as a net-importer of maize. As I havein our previous notes, Zimbabwe will need to import about a million tonnes of maize in order to fulfil its annual needs.

On the one hand, the latest move by the government to intervene in the maize market shows a concern for the consumers’ well-being as food price inflation quickens, having reached a rate ofOn the other hand, these actions could disadvantage the farmers who had hoped that higher maize prices could compensate for yield losses. This will specifically be the case if the Zimbabwean government sets its “maize floor price” below the global maize prices.

The other point to keep in mind is that the Zimbabwean government, through its Grain Marketing Board hasa tender to buy 750,000 tonnes of maize in order to fulfil its domestic needs. This will be the largest import volume since 2016 when the country imported 1.4-million tonnes of maize. Under this scenario, the Zimbabwean government will have to pay the world price. Hence, I wonder if there will be price discrimination between local farmers and global maize supplies.

Over the coming months, I will be closely observing this experiment to pick up lessons for policymakers in the agricultural sector. What I have observed in the recent past in other African countries was the blockage of maize exports at certain times of the year, supposedly to control domestic food price inflation, but farmers ended up worse off, and that affected expansion in the sector.

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