{"id":11037,"date":"2012-05-30T09:08:09","date_gmt":"2012-05-30T09:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/?p=11037"},"modified":"2012-05-30T09:08:09","modified_gmt":"2012-05-30T09:08:09","slug":"malawi-wheat-imports-hits-99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/2012\/05\/30\/malawi-wheat-imports-hits-99\/","title":{"rendered":"Malawi wheat import hits 99%"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> The country&#8217;s major raw material for flour production, wheat, is being imported at 99 percent to meet local demand, Bakhresa Grain Milling has said.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/wheat-ears-and-wheat-kernels.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/wheat-ears-and-wheat-kernels-300x295.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"wheat-ears-and-wheat-kernels\" width=\"300\" height=\"295\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-11039\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nThe company&#8217;s Sales Manager Elias Nyirongo said the country is able to produce only 1 percent of wheat resulting in wheat products being expensive and more forex spent on imports.<\/p>\n<p>He said Malawi has the potential to produce wheat and reduce the quantity of wheat import.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The potential is there for small scale farmers to produce wheat and save forex in the process,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Nyirongo further said as Bakhresa they previously made efforts to improve wheat production by supporting small scale farmers but still the quantity was not enough.<\/p>\n<p>He said as a company they took an initiative to start cultivating the product in Namwera, Mangochi.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are currently cultivating wheat on a 500 hectare land but it is not enough as we are only able to produce 100 metric tonnes which is much lower than what we require per day.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our production capacity is 500 metric tonnes per day and you can see the difference,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Nyirongo said the company is expanding as it has acquired 650 hectors of land for wheat cultivation and also new machinery.<\/p>\n<p>He said with the help of government farmers in various districts need to be sensitised on wheat farming in order to cut expenses on wheat products.<\/p>\n<p>Apart from wheat production at the Namwera farm, Bakhresa also produces Soya beans, maize, potatoes and onions.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We produce soya and maize for local and export markets as a forex earner and also we do export wheat bran to Zimbabwe and South Africa,&#8221; said Nyirongo.<\/p>\n<p>Wheat is favourable in districts such as Mzimba, Rumphi, Mwanza, Neno, Mangochi, Mulanje, Blantyre and Chiradzulu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The country&#8217;s major raw material for flour production, wheat, is being imported at 99 percent to meet local demand, Bakhresa [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[342,2480,2481,258,684],"class_list":["post-11037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-2","tag-agriculture-2","tag-bakhresa","tag-bakhresa-grain-milling","tag-malawi","tag-wheat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}