14 September 2007
Pooling Resources Helps Ugandan Farmers Increase Production, Sales
Cooperatives help move subsistence farming to commercially competitive agriculture
This is sixth in a series of articles on U.S. food aid and agricultural assistance for vulnerable populations around the world.
Washington – Just five years ago Charles Mpaulo and other small-scale farmers in the extremely poor Buyamba area of Uganda faced a bleak future. They produced too little rice, maize, coffee and other crops to interest major buyers, and product quality was so poor they could not have sold it even if yields had increased.
In 2003 the U.S.-funded five-year Agriculture Productivity Enhancement Program (APEP) offered Mpaulo and other farmers in Uganda a chance to change their lives by helping them increase production, improve crop quality and market their products.
APEP relies on producer organizations, or cooperatives, as the most effective way of moving farm production toward commercially competitive agriculture.
However, the National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA), which runs the producer group project for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), faced a “heavy dose of skepticism” when its agents broached to the farmers the idea of pooling their resources, says Mike Mailloux, the NCBA program manager in Uganda.
“In the past they had a very bad experience with farmer groups,” he told USINFO.
So NCBA first approached the buyers and input suppliers to identify specific market opportunities and then told farmers what requirements they needed to meet to use those opportunities.
Although some farmers remained skeptical, 240 signed on and formed 12 producer groups in 2003. NCBA trainers helped them develop business plans and taught them basic organizational, financial and management skills as well as quality control and farming techniques. APEP established demonstration sites where farmers could learn about crop management and improved production technologies.
In the first year, the producer groups earned a premium on sales of approximately 20 percent by marketing higher-quality, trade-ready crops in bulk. When the news spread, interest in the cooperatives exploded, Mailloux said.
Some producer groups have joined forces to form larger organizations called depot committees. The volume of crop marketed at this level provides the economies of scale, which make partnerships with buyers even more profitable for both sides.
“Strong links to viable buyers who are in Uganda for the long run help ensure that the work started by USAID will continue after the program and technical assistance has ended,” Mailloux told NCBA.
As of March, there were more than 3,400 producer groups and 203 depot committees -- 70,000 members in total, according to NCBA.
In Buyamba, farmers who had organized themselves into 13 groups established one of the first depot committees in the country. Mpaulo, who became the Buyamba depot manager, said that his depot committee has emerged as a “pillar of hope” in a short time.
Farmers working within producer groups have generated up to 28 percent higher revenue than individual farmers.
Mailloux said that most producer groups are still in their infancy and face many challenges. But the first stage was a success by any measure, he said. In the first half of 2006 alone, those farmers sold almost 100 times more coffee, cotton and other crops than in all of 2004, far exceeding original projections. The increase in the value of those sales was even greater.
In Buyamba, the depot committee established a save-and-credit association, giving its members and shareholders access to credit.
“Now they can take care of the farming needs, give medical care to children and solve other household emergencies,” Mpaulo said. “This is manna from heaven.”
Additional information about APEP is available on the program’s Web site.
More about U.S. efforts to combat malnutrition and hunger worldwide is available in the eJournal USA U.S. Food Aid: Reducing World Hunger. See also Global Development and Foreign Aid.
