AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE National Food Reserve Agency (NFRA) has embarked on a strategy to purchase crops from farmers now that the harvesting season is around the corner.
The strategy is to purchase the crops from farms so that they can be reserved, thus guaranteeing national food security during the food shortage.
NFRA Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Milton Milos Lupa said this season they would purchase from farmers three food crops namely maize, rice and millet.
He gave a plan at a meeting with the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Mr Gerald Kusaya, during his visit to NFRA to see how the agency guarantees national food security by addressing food shortages through procuring, reserving and releasing food stocks efficiently and effectively.
Mr Lupa said NFRA the workforce was in regions ready for procuring and reserving food crops for the purchase.
He added that they had decided to purchase three cash crops as they wanted to strengthen the food reserve in case of a shortage so that they had sufficient stocks.
Mr Lupa said the main role of the agency was to procure food stocks, reserve, recycle and respond timely to food shortages in the country.
Since its establishment the agency has been successfully discharging its duties by ensuring the timely procurement of grains from farmers and responding timely to food shortages in the country.
NFRA has been a last resort to most farmers during the grain procurement season. Furthermore, he said, the agency had succeeded in reserving grains for number of years while observing quality standards which made Tanzanians to enjoy quality food releasing by NFRA.
