Cooperatives can liberate farmers
May 11, 2008
I wish to comment on on the article published in The New vision of May 7 about the farmers’ dilemma over increasing food prices. Recently, I was in Jinja doing field work and a farmer sold to me a sack of avocados at a giveaway price of sh4,000! There were about 60 or more avocados.
EDITOR—I wish to comment on on the article published in The New vision of May 7 about the farmers’ dilemma over increasing food prices. Recently, I was in Jinja doing field work and a farmer sold to me a sack of avocados at a giveaway price of sh4,000! There were about 60 or more avocados.
It cost me about about sh50per avocado yet in the market in and around Kampala the avocado price is sh200 which four times higher. The seller was not even a farmer!
Just imagine what this middleman must have paid the actual farmer! Maybe sh1,000 only, not enough to buy a bar of soap or a kilogramme of salt!
Farmers are indeed being exploited and need to be helped. I once planted maize on a 15-acre piece of land but later realised, it was a loss. I should rather have bought maize grain, ground it and sold it as flour.
I abandoned the business of growing maize as it does not pay. The poor and bad rural roads hinder access to markets by farmers and in some cases the farmers are very far from the markets and are exploited by the middlemen.
This is an area that needs to be addressed. The other solution is marketing through cooperatives as it was in the 60s. Farmers should organise themselves into farmer groups and sell their agro-products in bulk.
For example, the Irish potatoes farmers in Nyarusiza in Kisoro district should identify a trusted farmer who should collect and transport the produce to Kampala markets and sell on behalf of the farmers and pay them the proceeds.
A 50-kg bag of potatoes in Kisoro costs
about sh25,000 and is sold at sh50,000 in Kampala. Remember, the famers buy the same soap, sugar, salt, matchboxes that the middlemen do.
Middlemen are a problem and should be edged out if farmers are to benefit significantly from farming. Cooperatives should be revived to counter the increasing prices of agroproducts.
David Bizimana, Kampala
It cost me about about sh50per avocado yet in the market in and around Kampala the avocado price is sh200 which four times higher. The seller was not even a farmer!
Just imagine what this middleman must have paid the actual farmer! Maybe sh1,000 only, not enough to buy a bar of soap or a kilogramme of salt!
Farmers are indeed being exploited and need to be helped. I once planted maize on a 15-acre piece of land but later realised, it was a loss. I should rather have bought maize grain, ground it and sold it as flour.
I abandoned the business of growing maize as it does not pay. The poor and bad rural roads hinder access to markets by farmers and in some cases the farmers are very far from the markets and are exploited by the middlemen.
This is an area that needs to be addressed. The other solution is marketing through cooperatives as it was in the 60s. Farmers should organise themselves into farmer groups and sell their agro-products in bulk.
For example, the Irish potatoes farmers in Nyarusiza in Kisoro district should identify a trusted farmer who should collect and transport the produce to Kampala markets and sell on behalf of the farmers and pay them the proceeds.
A 50-kg bag of potatoes in Kisoro costs
about sh25,000 and is sold at sh50,000 in Kampala. Remember, the famers buy the same soap, sugar, salt, matchboxes that the middlemen do.
Middlemen are a problem and should be edged out if farmers are to benefit significantly from farming. Cooperatives should be revived to counter the increasing prices of agroproducts.
David Bizimana, Kampala