Zambia Rushing to Boost Corn Exports Amid ‘Bumper’ Harvests

Zambia’s is rushing to boost corn exports from last year’s record harvest as it prepares for another “bumper” crop, the country’s Food Reserve Agency said.

“We have export commitments presently amounting to about 300,000 metric tons of maize,” Lazarous Mawele, FRA’s marketing manager, said via phone from the capital Lusaka today. “This is in addition to what we have already exported in recent months out of the 1 million metric tons we started off with.”

Zambia, Africa’s largest copper producer, is seeking to diversify its economy away from mining by increasing subsidies to farmers. The country harvested a record 2.7 million tons of corn in the 2009-2010 farming season, finance and planning minister Situmbeko Musokotwane said at a government meeting in October.

Mawele said Zambia has exported about 200,000 tons of corn to countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Zimbabwe since July, Mawele said.

(Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-05/zambia-rushing-to-boost-corn-exports-amid-bumper-harvests.html)