A new packaging standard has been designed and endorsed by the East African member states including Tanzania where farmers and traders will now be required to fill up grains in sacks, not exceeding 50kgs instead of the current 100kgs.
The new development comes as a salvation to farmers in the country who have been complaining that grain buyers force them to sell their produce in sacks filled up to over 100kgs, hence selling in losses.
On Wednesday, a meeting was held by the Tanzania Grain Stakeholders hosted by the Eastern African Grain Council (EAGC), where it was revealed that already all member states in the region have agreed to the new standard now awaiting for implementation.
The EAGC Executive Director, Mr Gerald Masila, said that apart from benefiting farmers, the new standard proposal looked into the consideration on the health of potters who load and offload the excessively filled sacks on daily basis.
“The issue of new standard for the sacks was raised by many stakeholders, including the International Labour Organisation (ILO) which conducted enough studies on the matter and noted with concern the health consequences porters were passing through,” he said.
Stakeholders were also briefed on the contribution of Tanzania towards the formulation of the standard, which was advocated by the Weight and Measures Agency (WMA).
According to Mr Masila, it was important now that grain stakeholders including farmers cooperate with the governments of the member states by tackling some challenges that might arise in the course of implementation of the standard.
Grain quality and harmonisation of standard testing methodologies were some of the issues the East African region need to deal with, as the stakeholders called for the governments to ensure only one agency if empowered to deal with grain qualities as opposed to the present practice.
On the food security in the region, member states were urged to have the so called Food Balance Sheet which will help determine the amount of reserve food against the shortage, because decisions can be taken on whether to import food to cater for the shortage or not.
Mentioning as an example, they pointed out on the recent importation of rice in Tanzania which has caused serious drop in prices among the small farmers markets.
They said the importation of over 60,000 tones of rice early this year has caused a lot of losses to the farmers who had huge stocks of grains but which didn’t reach the markets.
“We have now requested for the member states apart from introducing food balance sheets, need to fully involve the private sector including farmers associations when planning to import food, in order to protect local grain production particularly rice.
An agenda attracted testimonies from the participants with one Mr Zubery Mwachulla from Iringa Region reporting that farmers there have threatened to stop paddy farming if the government keeps allowing rice importation in the future.
By PIUS RUGONZIBWA, Tanzania Daily News