The price of maize has dropped sharply in Kenya over the past two months, from KSh 4,600 per 90-kilo bag to KSh 2,500 and this has put maize farmers in a difficult financial situation.
A huge harvest and cheaper corn from Uganda have caused a huge surplus on the market, which is why prices have dropped so sharply.
A lot of farmers in the North Rift area had been saving their crops in case the prices went up, so the drop in prices has hurt them a lot.
For these farmers, selling their crops quickly is the only way to stop losing more money as prices keep going down. The price of staple corn has gone down from KSh 5,200 to KSh 3,200 in Kisumu and KSh 2,800 in Nakuru, according to David Maina, a miller in Eldoret.
The price of milling has dropped from KSh 160 to KSh 120 per two-kilogram packet, and farmers are also worried about what will happen to it.
Prices are likely to drop even more. In Ndalat, Nandi County, farmer Jackson Rotich called what was happening a "big loss" and stressed how important it was for someone to step in and support corn prices right away.
Another organization having trouble is the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB). They have cut back on buying from farms because they don't have enough money. So that farmers don't lose all of their corn, some people want the government to give the NCPB more money to buy it from them.
For the 2022–2023 marketing year, Ugandan corn imports rose from 2,629 tonnes to 34,590 tonnes, despite these problems. When it comes to imports, they went from 10,725 tonnes to 28,050 tonnes from Zambia. Making it even harder for local farmers to sell their goods at prices that can be kept up, this influx has made the supply problems worse.
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