Answering questions in the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, Fernando argued that it was the state of the roads that largely determined whether maize grown in Mozambique is sold in the country or abroad.
The most notorious case is the agriculturally rich district of Milange, in Zambezia province. Milange is on the border with Malawi, and just 100 kilometres, on a tarred toad, from the Malawian city of Blantyre.
But it is 350 kilometres, by mostly dirt roads, from the Zambezia provincial capital, Quelimane. "So, from a purely commercial point of view, where is it easier to take the maize?", Fernando asked.
Similarly, Zumbo, in the western province of Tete, was 250 kilometres from Lusaka, on a mostly tarred road - but 500 kilometres, on a dirt road, from Tete city. So it was obviously easier for maize producers in Zumbo to sell their maize in Zambia than in Tete city.
But the maize from Alto Molocue, also in Zambezia, does not go to Malawi - it is sold in Northern Mozambique because the roads it takes are mostly tarred.
Likewise for Morrumbala, a major maize producing district in the Zambezi Valley. It is just 40 kilometres from Mozambique's main north-south highway. Morrumbala maize is thus not taken over any border but sold in central and southern Mozambique.
Maize would flow wherever transport was cheapest, Fernando argued, and "there can only be a different result if the state intervenes and buys up the surplus crops".
This was at one time the philosophy - state bodies, first the Agricultural Marketing Board (AGRICOM), and then its successor, the Mozambique Grain Institute (ICM), would act as "buyer of last resort". The grain thus purchased could form a food reserve.
But that is no longer government policy. Fernando said that it would cost 70 million dollars to constitute an emergency food reserve of 83,000 tonnes of maize and beans to supply about 1.2 million people for a year.
Should the government really subsidise the ICM to the tune of 70 million dollars a year ? Fernando preferred the alternative of "using the financial resources generated by the economy to solve the basic problem once and for all - that is, the construction or rehabilitation of roads, bridges and storage depots".
That was the "sustainable, long term option", said the Minister. So brand new roads were being built to reach the maize of the northernmost province of Niassa, and much of the road between the two main Niassa cities of Lichinga and Cuamba would be tarred.
Fernando pointed out that a key stretch of the main north- south highway in Sofala province, from the Inchope crossroads to Caia, on the south bank of the Zambezi, "used to be a nightmare".
But today it had been rebuilt to such a high standard that it resembled a racing track.
He assured the deputies that it would not be too long before the Milange-Quelimane and Zumbo-Tete roads were in similar conditions, the new bridge over the Zambezi at Caia was complete, and the Sena railway from Tete province to the port of Beira (destroyed during the war of destabilisation) was working again.
When those links were in place, and with peasants able to check prices via mobile phone, "then only those who really want to sell their maize abroad will do so".
SOURCE: AIM
