TO ENHANCE national food security and support Government’s economic diversification agenda, an US$81 million private sectorled input support scheme has been launched to benefit 120 commercial and 250,000 smallscale farmers in Zambia. African Green Resources (AGR) and its partners will provide farm inputs and modern technology to wheat and soya bean Zambian farmers in exchange for grain.

About US$55 million will be channelled to fertiliser while US$26 million will be invested in value addition (of wheat and soya bean), stock feed and expansion of silos. The programme is part of a broader plan by AGR and several local, African and global partners to invest US$150 million in Zambia to develop an irrigation dam, a 50 megawatt solar farm, expansion of existing silo capacity at a farming complex by 80,000 tonnes, and establishment of a value addition food complex.

AGR chairman Zuneid Yousuf said the company has entered into a partnership with Mkushibased Agri-Options Limited (AOL), a local consortium of commercial farmers, and Praconil Group of the United States of America (USA), which intends to finance the farm input scheme. He said the company and its partners will provide Zambian farmers with certified seed, fertiliser and agro-chemicals. AGR will also test soil samples for farmers with an agreement for them to pay through the crop they will store in grain silos at AOL. “Finances will be arranged for the entire production line from farm inputs until the last stage of processing within the value chain.

“The plan is to give them (farmers) a fair market price and obviously some inputs. And as recovery, we will take the crop but the rest they can sell on the open market. “We will provide 60,000 tonnes of fertiliser for wheat and soya farming. This will be done according to the timelines discussed and guided by AOL,” Mr Yousuf said.

He said AGR anticipates receiving 44,000 tonnes of wheat per season of which 36,000 tonnes will be processed using the current processing plant at AOL, with an extraction rate of 80 percent. The 20 percent bran will be sold at US$100 per tonne. “The flour will be sold on the local and international markets with the export market fetching prices of between US$688 and US$700 per tonne of flour,” he said. Mr Yousuf said the scheme will help small, medium and commercial farmers targeted in the first batch to grow their businesses through access to markets, value addition and credit finance. “The funding is available for phase one and we are quite advanced in stages of negotiations with phase two, and that’s why we are negotiating with other regional funding firms.

“This year, I think we are ready to build on what we started already in 2019, including the value addition process,” Mr Yousuf said. Financiers of the project also intend to set up a centre for eight major value addition projects for agro processing of soya into textualised soya protein for meat extenders’ chain, glucose and maize corn snacks factory, cereals and biscuit-making facilities in Mkushi. He said AGR has engaged the African Fertiliser and Agri-business Partnership of USA, Dutch Good Growth Fund, World Food Programme, Afrexim Bank, Canadian Commercial Corporation, Korea International Cooperation Agency, USAID and other European banks which provide equity and disaster finance. Other partners are the African Development Bank, the Protein Research Foundation, African Union, and Sace Italy and AGI, which has guaranteed some of the funding.

“We will repay the loan from sales of wheat flour, soya processing plant products and silo revenue,” Mr Yousuf said. And AFAP president and chief executive officer Jason Scarpone said the organisation, which facilitated deals in excess of US$680 million in fertiliser trade over the last few years, wants to see more competition to stimulate efficiency. Mr Scarpone said small and medium enterprises need to compete in the market to create a vibrant private sector.

“It’s an exciting initiative with many investment opportunities which we think our partners will be interested in,” he said. AGR and its partners have agreed to use South Africa-based Global Collateral Control (GCC) as collateral managers for the grain which farmers will use to pay for the inputs. GCC chief operating officer Dennis Naicker said the company has managed grain silos and warehouses in 11 countries in Africa, including Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique, for the last 14 years. Mr Naicker said the company has qualified and certified graders who assess the quality and quantity of the grain to determine its value.