Agriculture

MBABANE – The National Maize Corporation (NMC) has generated E9 857 312.57 profit between July, August and September.

During the second quarter of 2025, the company generated a total revenue of E44 024 279.03, reflecting continued business activity and market engagement.

The cost of sales (COS) amounted to E34 166 966.46, resulting in a gross profit of E9 857 312.57. This is depicted in the Ministry of Agriculture’s second quarter performance report tabled in Parliament on Monday.

NMC is guaranteeing a market to local maize farmers at competitive prices and providing good quality maize meal at reasonable prices. During the period under review, the corporation trained 630 farmers on Good Agricultural Practices on grains across the country against a target of 1 200 farmers, as stipulated in the report.

This reflects a 57.4 per cent decrease from the 1 479 farmers trained in the same quarter of the previous year.

This was attributed to Farmer Development officers focusing more on NMC maize collections in this period compared to the previous season.

The report depicts that maize collected for this period is 6 218.97 metric tonnes (MT) compared to 3 837MT collected in the same period last year. In comparison to quarter two last year, there was an increase of 62 per cent in the local produce, equivalent to 2 381.97MT.

Beans sourced from local farmers during the period under review stood at 229 960mt compared to 3 100 0mt in the previous quarter and 18.972mt in the first quarter of 2025/26. This reflects a 1 112 per cent increase compared to last year, as shown in the report.

“Grain production promotions conducted in the period resulted in contracting of 258ha from 23 farmers. overall, 4 170.83ha (3 714.02ha of maize and 456.81ha of beans) of land from 583 farmers were contracted to NMC by the end of the period compared to 4 688ha from 693 farmers in the previous year. The decline was because of adjustment to total area contracted due to the expiry of inactive contracts,” reads the report.

On another note, area in active production among contracted farmers stood at 150 hectares (0ha for maize and 150ha for beans) by the end of the reporting period. In the same quarter of last year, the active area was 34ha (0ha for maize and 34ha for beans), which shows a 341 per cent increase. The increase was because of production of beans from LUSIP farmer companies during the period. Maize producer price was increased from E5 800 in the last quarter to E6 000 per tonne in the current quarter.

“Once again, His Majesty’s government, through the Ministry of Agriculture, extended its Input Subsidy Programme for the 2025/26 farming season. However, there were some changes introduced in administering this year’s subsidy programme. This was done for the it to benefit and align the programme with its intended purpose of ensuring households’ food security and alleviating rural poverty by and benefitting vulnerable emaSwati at the grassroots level,” reads the report.

Full article available in our publication.

NMC is guaranteeing a market to local maize farmers at competitive prices and providing good quality maize meal at reasonable prices. (Pic: Protect Our Livelihood)

Summary of the NMC performance.