NEWS:
Late delivery of agricultural inputs: a challenge for farmers
March 17, 2025
In Burundi, in all provinces, farmers complain about delays in the supply of inputs, they speak of a decline in production. They complain about the distribution of inputs that is never done regularly over different seasons. As a result of this situation, farmers are forced to buy agricultural inputs from traders at exorbitant prices because getting enough fertilizer is a headache. Farmers report, on the other hand, that traders are never short of agricultural inputs. A bag of inputs that is normally purchased at 26,000BIF can be purchased at a price ranging from 45,000 to 50,000BIF or 60,000 for Totahara-type inputs. Input orders arriving very late. In the province of Cibitoke, the CDN Association is working hard to make them available on time so that we don’t work at a loss. Farmers cannot provide an estimate of the losses due to delayed agricultural inputs but the losses are real. In the same vein, farmers are suffering huge losses due to the irregular distribution of inputs produced by the organic fertilizer plant minerals and agricultural lime FOMI. They do not have inputs as they planned in their agricultural projects. It is important to know that, in the absence of inputs, production is being reduced. Farmers also complain that they do not have the inputs in time when they pay in advance. Nevertheless, the CDN Association is doing well, because it practices agriculture of corn, soybeans and beans and it has put in place a strategy to order these fertilizers in advance. Thus, the CDN Association has a habit of pre-season input stocks: it does everything possible to have inputs on time. Thanks to this strategy, the farmers supervised by the CDN Association manage to have a satisfactory production. With all due respect to the farmers, the thorny issue of inputs will not be solved as quickly as we would like because the FOMI plant also recognizes that demand for inputs is far higher than supply from this plant although a large part of the farmers are served. It further submits that there is no urgent solution as the plant cannot produce more than its capacity.
