THE National Food Reserve Agency (NFRA) has entered into a contract to sell a total of 650,000 tonnes of maize grains to Zambia in the current agricultural harvesting season.

The sealed contract will see the state- owned food reserve agency, through its Songwe centre, exporting the said tonnages of maize grains through Tanzania- Zambia Railway line to the neighboring country.

The development has been unveiled by Dickson Nyika, the zone manager for NFRA in Tabora region during a special interview to this publication.

"So far, we have entered into a contract to market a total of 650,000 tonnes of maize grains to Zambia," he said, added that the maize will be sourced from the 2022/23 reserve.

In order to stand at comfortable side to serve the contract, Nyika said after attaining the set food storageing targets, the plan is to ensure surplus maize grains collected from other zones are channelled to the Songwe centre in readiness for exportation.

He said the Tabora centre is serving for the NFRA's lake zone, overseeing at least eight regions of Shinyanga, Tabora, Kigoma, Geita, Simiyu, Kagera, Mwanza and Mara.

"In this season, our zone, with a total of six crops buying centres has set to purchase a total of 10,000 tonnes of cereal crops, 4000 for maize and remaining 6000 of paddy," he said.

He said up to yesterday, the zone has managed to purchase over 548 tonnes of maize, and 127 tonnes of paddy, saying the centres are currently busy continuing to receive the produced from the farmers in order to meet the set collection targets.

The manager added that the vast zone has food storage facility with capacity to reserve at least 26,500 tonnes of food, chiefly maize grains paddy.

He unveiled the cereal crops buying centres available in the zone as Igunga and Busondo (Tabora), Bukombe (Geita), Shinyanga, and Nyankitonto centres in Kigoma, which are specifically for purchasing maize grains and paddy.

However, he said the Bukene centre in Nzega, Tabora is dealing with paddy.

Following a patriotic move by President Samia Suluhu Hassan to set a rewarding prices in purchasing of the cereal crops, which now stands at 900/- and 700/-for one Kilogramme of paddy and maize grains respectively, he said most farmers have been sensitized to sell their produce at the NFRA's centres.

"And as part to improve our service delivery, in this season we have decided to adopt a better system, through which we have entered into contracts with a record number of small scale farmers, and those in Agricultural Marketing Cooperative Societies (AMCOS), as well as crops dealers in order to ensure for availability of needed volume of crops," he said.

Divulging more plans, he said NFRA in the zone was expected to increase the number of centres for procuring crops, at least to ten, from the current six.

"The envisaged plan will go in tandem with expansion of our food storageing capacity," he said.

Nyika expressed gratitude for the manner to which president Samia has injected the agency with enough budget to support executing their daily roles professionally, the development which he expressed enabling them to purchase enough food and reserve it for the national security.

"We're also looking forward to venture into a joint intervention with the local government leaders to impart the farmers with recommended practices on post-harvest management," he said.

Through the initiative, he said the farmers will be trained on maize grains grading, pesticide management, harvesting and to curtail post-harvest loss.

"Records shows that at least 30 percent of grains are lost at different processes in post-harvest, including harvesting, storageing and, transportation," he said.