FAO and partners analyse incentives and disincentives of prices of agricultural products
Technicians from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (MASA) and the Agriculture Policy Research Centre (CEPAG), the Faculty of Agronomy and Forestry Engineering of the University Eduardo Mondlane (UEM) and other institutions linked to the agricultural sector have been for two days involved into a training, within a technical seminar held by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the project " Monitoring and Analysing Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP) in Africa."
MAFAP aims to develop national capacity for monitoring and analysis of the policies effects on the most important agricultural markets of the country, identifying their limitations to the development of the agricultural sector.
The project taking place in Mozambique since 2014, aims to establish a monitoring system, analysis and reform of national agricultural and food policies.
"This training aims to analyse the prices established by the companies and farmers; to realize the potential of the market; to analyse how the government interfere with changes in market prices and how to get a fair price," said at the seminar the FAO policy analyst, Karl Pauw.
"What we want is that producers get fair prices as an incentive for production and also assess whether the existing policies in the country are or not in favour of agricultural producers "he said.
For the technician from Mozambique Institute of Cotton (IAM), Deisy Sabão, "this training is important to understand what creates incentives and disincentives in the prices of agricultural products and also to understand how production costs are calculated".
Deisy Sabão, who joined in the trainings since 2014 says that MAFAP has brought positive approaches to review many sectorial policies.
"We are still in the process of assessing the feasibility of these policies, we already started to implement what we are learning in terms of policies analysis, strategies and follow-up actions for both our companies and our producers do not go out to lose."
Through MAFAP, FAO provides assistance to MASA in appropriate agricultural reforms formulation. The Seminar was an opportunity for technicians also discuss the areas where analysis should be done in future that, can contribute to the decision-making process in the agricultural sector in the country.
During the seminar were presented studies of test results at regional level on the incentives and disincentives in the production and marketing of some local crops, with greater emphasis on corn.
Besides Mozambique, MAFAP is being implemented in a further nine African countries: Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and it is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Government of the Netherlands and the Agency the United States for International Development (USAID).