Soybean farmers, dealers play cat and mouse game

“I had to sell the eight bags when it wasn’t fully dry. I had already picked some money from a middleman,” Mr Odong said.

His testimony is a replica of what many other farmers go through in Omoro District, the Monitor has established.

Ms Harriet Akello, 45, a farmer in Oryo Village in Kec Okela Parish, said some farmers rush to sell half-dry soybeans because of poverty.

“Last week, I took soybeans that weighed 115 kilogrammes at home to a dealer, but when he weighed the sack, it had reduced to 98kgs, so they are cheating us,” Ms Akello said.

Mr Robert Odoch, a produce dealer in Patek Bar, said some dealers tighten the weighing scales to cheat farmers.

“I must agree that there are people cheating farmers, but also besides bringing wet soybeans, farmers are adding sand into the soybeans, so that it weighs more. Two days ago, I arrested a farmer who added more than five kilogrammes of sand into one of his bags of soybeans,” Mr Odoch said.

He said some middlemen put a Shs500 coin under the weighing scale to alter the reading. Mr Richard Olobo, the chairperson of soybeans farmers in Akidi Sub-county, told Daily Monitor that middlemen are exploiting farmers.

“They come and set their price tag high by Shs200 to lure farmers. However, their weighing scales have been tampered with and they end up cheating us by at least five to 10kgs,” Mr Olobo said.

He asked the district leadership to protect farmers from such unscrupulous dealers. Mr Jomo Oyet, the district production officer, said: “Normally, you will find the middlemen in the garden waiting for the soybeans that are being threshed. It is true they are exploiting people because of the high poverty levels.”

The biggest buyers of soybeans within the region are Mt Meru Millers in Lira District and Mukwano Group of Companies who sub-contract agents to buy a kilogramme between Shs1,500 and Shs2,000.

Mr Douglas Peter Okello, the chairperson of Omoro, said they are engaging the Agriculture and Trade ministries to crack down on dishonest middlemen.

“Besides reviving community stores, we are lobbying for value addition equipment from the Agriculture ministry and linking our farmers to better markets,” Mr Okello said.

He added that “about 93 percent of households in Omoro grow soybeans yet the district has a 70.1 percent poverty rate. This means the production of soybeans has not improved household incomes”.

Mr Julius Peter Ocen, the executive secretary for Soybeans Development Agency Uganda, said 80 percent of soybeans is consumed locally, adding that there is lack of government investment in the cereals sector.

“There is a need to do policy adjustment if farmers are to pick anything out of grains. Right now, nobody can export even a kilogramme of soybeans into the Kenya market, it is their traders who come and buy it from our market and the government has not protected the farmers,” Mr Ocen said.

“It is only Uganda in the entire East Africa that is not enforcing the minimum grain trade standards,’’ he added.

Mr Ocen said much as farmers are being cheated by middlemen, the traders also don’t have meters used to test moisture content in cereals.

“The government needs to regulate the market so that both the farmers and dealers have a fair share of the investment,” Mr Ocen advised. 

According to information obtained from the district, more than 500 metric tonnes of soybeans are produced every planting season.

The law

The Weights and Measures Act 1965, Cap 103 mandates Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) to perform verification of all measuring and weighing equipment used in trade in order to enhance fairness in trade. In farming operations, there are various types of scales that can be used ranging from heavy-duty platform scales to electronic scales. Ms Letitiah Namubiru, the manager of legal metrology at UNBS, said most weighing scales cannot be manipulated by the traders. She said the types of scales used mostly by dealers in rural areas are illegal. “These are mostly hand-on weighing scales (big round scales) with a hook down and it can be opened from behind. We cannot verify these weighing scales,” she added. Ms Namubiru said in the previous exercise in Omoro, the team seized 77 non-trade type equipment and 442 trade-type equipment, which were verified by the inspector.

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