FCMR is composed by 11 unions. The affiliated primary cooperatives have more than 90,000 members. The growers of this crop presented the challenges as follow :
(i) Expensive agro-inputs, Limited alternative for watering the crop during the growing season ;
(ii) Not enough skills in management and governance of cooperative committees ; (iii) Few cooperatives have the capacity to satisfy the quality of maize requested by the market ;
(iv) Lack to purchase member production to middlemen and processing units are exploiting such weakness and pay a low price for cooperatives members ;
(v) Limited access to working capital to make cooperative union engage in a large business in maize sector for interests of primary cooperatives and Low competency of leaders to manage Cooperatives ;
(vi) Lack of adequate and appropriate primary processing and storage facilities leading to high post-harvest ;
(vii) Maize is often not fully dried at the farm nor is it fumigated, resulting in the need for further drying and sometimes fumigation by traders ;
(viii) Disasters/ Climate Change (heavy rain and sun) and diseases ;
(ix) Lack of data of production and area cultivated and soil quality related to the culture and seeds ;
(x) increased soil infertility resulting in the lack of farming inputs and inappropriate planting system as broadcasting planting and intercropping with beans is done without any scientific guidance.
It needs strong advocacy for supporting cooperative members to get a small irrigation system, a Domination of fragmented sales between smallholder farmers and small traders and assistance to organize cooperatives to sell in bulk, they may not sell through the cooperative.
