(Bloomberg) — Zambia plans to sell as much as a third of its record corn crop as drought and floods in neighboring nations decimate harvests of the grain used as a staple food.
The country will sell as much as 1 million metric tons of its white-corn surplus, Agriculture Minister Given Lubinda said. The government has set aside about almost one-third of its record 3.2 million-ton 2014 crop to sell locally and to neighbors, he said.
“I’m hoping very much that all of it will go to exports because the quantity we’re sitting on now, about 1.4 million tons, is much more than we require for local consumption,” Lubinda said by mobile phone from Lusaka, the capital.
The worst drought since 1992 in South Africa, the continent’s biggest corn producer and traditional supplier of its neighbors, has damaged plants, with the nation predicting a 32 percent drop in the 2015 harvest to the smallest in eight years. Botswana said crops are showing signs of “total failure” due to below-average rainfall, while floods in Malawi and Mozambique have curbed production.
Grain SA, the largest representative of cereal crop farmers in South Africa, expects the country to have a surplus of at least 100,000 tons of white corn, enough to meet the needs of the country and neighboring Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland until the new harvest starts in about May 2016, Chief Executive Officer Jannie de Villiers said in a March 18 interview.
Cornmeal made from the white variety of the grain is used to make a southern African staple food known as nshima in Zambia, sadza in Zimbabwe and pap in South Africa, while the yellow type is used to feed animals bred for meat.
