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Add value instead of selling unprocessed fruits - expert
Many fruit farmers opt to sell their produce cheaply since they are perishable rather than lose out completely. But if there are ways to add value to the produce, they would earn more. PHOTO BY MARTINS E. SSEKWEYAMA
Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) has advised farmers in Masaka against selling farm produce in unprocessed form but instead add value and target the export market.
Farmers in this area are reknown for pineapples, mangoes and passion fruits, some of which are sold in neighbouring countries.
But Valentine Ogwang, the assistant executive director, UIA, urged them to go beyond this if they are to earn better incomes from agriculture.
He was talking to farmers’ groups in Masaka District on the benefits of agricultural value addition.
“Farmers can earn better incomes from the fruit powder and syrups, for instance, than they do from whole fresh fruits that are sold cheaply,” he noted.
Ogwang explained that UIA, as part of support intervention, has started by mobilising smallholder farmers in groups for higher bargaining power.
“As part of our interventions for farmers, we are identifying industries and machinery for them and encouraging formation of agro-business associations such that we can avail to them the market information for their processed goods,” he added.
But Rogers Mugerwa, a pineapple farmer from Kyannamukaaka Sub-county, in Masaka District, said they desire to have their fruits processed but have been hindered by lack of capital.
“For many years, we have appealed to government to have at least one fruit processing plant in the region but in vain,” he lamented. “This leaves us to be exploited by the so-called middlemen who even determine the prices.”
He, however, accepts that they earn little from the fruits, because they deal in perishable products.
Previously, Masaka had a pineapple processing plant but this also collapsed with the demise of farmers’ cooperative unions in early 1980s.
