Limited awareness of standards hampers maize trade, experts say

Limited awareness of standards among people in the maize trade, and the absence of incentives to invest in practices that lead to compliance with standards are to blame for the economic losses farmers incur whenever maize is rejected by the buyer. 

Rejection of grains means loss of trade opportunities, and low pay to farmers due to costs incurred by processors while improving the quality of grains like sorting, cleaning, drying, and storage among others. 

This was revealed by Daniel Njiwa, the head of regional food trade at AGRA Africa while concluding a one-week tour of members of the Grain Council of Uganda. 

The tour was aimed at assessing the impact of a project titled Improving Compliance with Maize Quality Standards along Trade Corridors in East Africa. 

The program was launched in 2021 by AGRA with support from the UK government’s Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) and USAID through the Eastern African Grain Council (EAGC) and The Grain Council of Uganda (TGCU) as the implementing partners. 

The aim was for participating organisations to create buyer-seller linkages for trade in quality maize along the two trade corridors in East Africa, which are Uganda-Kenya and Tanzania-Kenya corridors. 

Participating organizations were also required to establish supplier Clusters in Uganda and Tanzania composed of exporters and farmer groups in Eastern, Western and Northern parts of Uganda, and then the southern and northern highland zones of Tanzania. 

AGRA team talks to maize farmers in Mubende at Aponye Grain handling facility. (Credit: Prossy Nandudu)

Before the intervention, it was estimated that Uganda and Tanzania were losing approximately $16m and $5.3m, respectively, due to the reduced value of agricultural exports resulting from poorly handled grains, in particular aflatoxin contamination. 

That is why large-scale millers in Kenya rejected 19% of maize deliveries equivalent to approximately 2,800 metric tonnes of maize worth over $932,000 in 2015 due to poor quality and higher levels of aflatoxins, according to reports from the EAGC. 

Therefore, the investment according to Njiwa, was aimed at addressing quality issues and enforcing standards along the maize value chain because most of the maize produced in Uganda ends up in the regional market. 

“So coming here in Uganda, we really wanted to appreciate the kind of relationships that aggregators have established with smallholder farmers, types of services offered in order to improve the handling of maize right from the farm to the market,” said Njiwa. 

He however added through his assessment of farmers participating in the project, the knowledge has been given and that they now know what needs to be done but there is no drive to increase investments in additional services like equipment. 

“The information has filtered through and they know what is required. It is now on the other end of investment where aggregators could go beyond what they are doing to reach out to farmers with additional services like equipment to reduce quality concerns in the market,” Njiwa added. 

He gave an example of a lady in Mubende who is in the process of supplying maize to Aponye Ltd and is requesting only one tarpaulin to help during the harvest and drying of maize to maintain the quality and standard needed by the off-taker. 

How off-takers are helping farmers 

To ensure that farmers embrace standards, Wilson Tumwiine the operations manager at Askar General Merchandise in Mityana district, said they train farmers right from the field all through the harvest season so as to maintain the quality of maize. 

“The training is conducted in the local language depending on the areas where farmers are located, accompanied by posters with illustrations on how to maintain the quality of agricultural produce,” explained Tumwiine. 

Other targets to TGCU members include creating awareness of aflatoxins and management practices, popularising the importance of Aflasafe, a biological control product, to counter aflatoxins, and also working with the Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) to increase awareness of existing maize standards among others.