NMC PREDICTS MAIZE SELF-SUFFICIENCY BY 2020 IF...

MBABANE - The National Maize Corporation (NMC) is desirous to bridge the huge deficit between locally produced and imported maize, and is already considering several strategies of redressing the situation.

This has been revealed by NMC Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sabelo Msibi. 
Outlining the short to medium goals of the organisation, Msibi said NMC wishes to bridge a gap of about 30 000MT (metric tonnes) between imported and locally sourced maize.

Currently, the NMC imports about 90 percent of all maize it purchases to satisfy the local market. This, by regional standards, is an anomaly for a country like Eswatini which receives normal-to-above-average rainfall every season.

“While we have already started various programmes aimed at assisting local maize farmers to produce optimally, we still foresee them not meeting our demand at least for the next two years. This has prompted us to also consider approaching some farm owners with underutilised land to lease it to NMC in order produce enough maize and beans locally, and we are already making preliminary plans and presentations to key stakeholders,” revealed Msibi.

Msibi said if this programme succeed, a huge scale of maize production would be realised in the short to medium term, millions of Emalangeni cash outflow currently used to procure maize in neighbouring  countries would be saved and circulated internally instead .

“The plan is piloting a large scale maize farming project, which would be handed over to local farmers eventually following due processes that will include training and capacitating them to continue to run these farms efficiently,” explained Msibi.
Msibi said such a project, if implemented, would guarantee the country of food security.

“We have been studying other countries which have similar weather conditions like ours, and we are confident that eSwatini too could be self-sufficient when it comes to maize production,” he said.

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