Market your own farm products

Most smallholder farmers sell their farm products soon after harvest and usually without the chance to determine the price at which to sell the commodities. 
The traders who buy the products always determine how much to pay the poor farmers who are not in position to store their produce and sell when the prices improve.

They are powerless because the commodities that they produce have a very short shelflife and can rot and perish if kept for too long. 
The traders often buy the products right on the farms and they have the capacity to take them to far off markets and to store them there for long periods before selling them at twice or thrice the price that they bought them.  This is exploitation of farmers by the traders.

Slow Food Uganda, which is part of a much larger and international anti-hunger organisation, slow food, and works to ensure that all people have access to good, clean and fair food, has been addressing the problem of smallholder farmers’ exploitation by setting up what it refers to as earth markets. 

Hannington Kisakye, the organisation’s communications and advocacy officer, Slow Food Uganda said, “We came up with the idea of earth markets as meeting points for farmers to sell their farm products directly to consumers and to discuss their common problems and to learn more about one another and the activities they do for a living.”

He said since 2015 Slow Food Uganda has established earth markets at Mukono District headquarters and others in Wakiso, Buikwe, Manafa, and Lira districts. They are open one day a week and farmers have a weekly opportunity to carry their farm produce directly to the market and to sell them to the consumers instead of exploitative middlemen.

All Slow Food Uganda member farmers commit to practice organic farming and to promote biodiversity, agro-ecology, and conservation of indigenous food crops. John Wanyu, the programmes director of biodiversity protection hub has said, “earth markets have made big positive changes in the living standards of many smallholder farmers in the country.  We have come this far through borrowing the Noah’s Ark concept from the Bible and creating the Ark of Taste in which we save and propagate seeds and animals that are at risk of extinction. We also advocate increased production of indigenous crops and livestock.”

Mr Michael Ssali is a veteran journalist, 
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