Government says it has plans of purchasing farm yields from farmers early through the state grain trader Agriculture Development Marketing Cooperation (Admarc) before vendors flood the market.

According to Deputy Minister of Agriculture Agnes Nkusa Nkhoma, government is aware that vendors take advantage of the desperate farmers who usually sale their produce at lower prices.

“We have a lot of plans with Admarc, we have planned that when they are ready to buy, they go early on the market.

“So that people should not give their crops to the vendors, so we our plan is that Admarc should go early than vendors,” said Nkusa Nkhoma.

She said her Ministry has instituted plans which will, among other interventions, ensure that there are adequate depots across the country.

Even this time around we will have mobile markets, and we remember very well the Minister of Agriculture told the legislators to provide a list for designated Admarc depots.

We have arranged some plans in place so that we can work with the temporary depots even permanent ones,” assured the deputy agriculture minister.

Preliminary projections indicate that the country will produce more than 4 million metric tonnes of maize.