Improving Smallholder Marketing of potatoes and groundnuts in Eastern Uganda.

Abstract

Farmers’ collective marketing has successfully been implemented in Western Kenya, but the potential has remained unexploited in Uganda. The project seeks to enhance marketing efficiency by improving access to credit for storage and marketing, the reduction of involuntary on farm post harvest storage and reduction of the costs and trade margins involved in potatoes and groundnut trading. The study focuses on collective marketing by small holder farmers which, in a developing economy such as Uganda, can play a significant role in providing secure collateral for micro-credit lending and thereby developing the rural financial economy. The project is intended to contribute to the poverty eradication strategy of the government of Uganda (GoU) by strengthening the capacity of poor farmers to raise income through commercial production and marketing of Irish potatoes and Groundnuts, among other crops. The target beneficiaries are the Mbale and Kapchorwa farmers who suffer extensive exploitation in the market place perpetuated by canning middlemen. This will also enable them to cushion themselves again a cash flash immediately following harvesting followed by a long period of cash scarcity during much of the year