Grain trade flows captured through the Eastern Africa informal cross border monitoring system decreased in September 2009 when compared to August levels. Statistics indicate that recorded maize volumes declined from 10,076 MT in August to 5598 MT in September - a 44 percent decrease, while bean trade also fell by 76 percent - from 14611 MT in August to 3556 MT. Rice trade flows on the other hand, declined over the August levels – dropping 13 percent from 914MT in August to 800 MT in September. The pattern of informal trade flow in maize, beans and rice has not changed throughout all the seasons that monitoring has been in place: Statistics shows that maize trade continues to be dominated by maize flows from Uganda to Kenya reaching a level of 129,860 MT since January 09, while trade in rice was dominated by flows from Tanzania to Kenya at 4608MT. Large volumes of rice have been sourced from Zambia and Pakistan destined to DRC, Rwanda and Burundi which reached a level of 161,600 MT since May 09. For beans, the flow has been dominated by Uganda where 101,131MT crossed to Kenya since January 09 though the September bean volume fell to 14,277MT from 19732MT in August 09. The volume of maize traded this September is 79 percent lower compared to September 2008 which might have been contributed by the fact that prices of maize were unseasonably quite high this year. Rice trade was 19 percent lower than the level recorded last September. Only beans recorded a 16 percent increase in traded volumes. The cumulative volume of informal trade in maize and beans commodities for January to September 2009 is significantly higher compared to the same time last year. A total maize tonnage of 226,555MT was traded between January and September 2009 compared to 159,476MT traded during the same period last year, a 42 percent increase. Similarly the total traded bean volume in the same period 2009 rose to 108,040 MT from 56,484MT last year. Consequently, the cumulative January to September traded rice volumes decreased from 12,191 MT last year to 8068 MT this year. The drop in traded volumes could be as a result of poor harvests in source countries.