Ending hunger and poverty – MDG No.1 – by 2015, is faced with many setbacks: the droughts, poor farming practices, post harvest losses, lack of quality inputs, the list is endless, as seen from expert knowledge. Yet the three groups of people – farmer, food vendors & consumers – affected by hunger and poverty identify the problem as being from a different source. First the farmers see it as coming from poor access to lack of access to market and market information. Second, the food vendors see it as coming from the long chain of middlemen in the food supply chain. And lastly, the poor consumers see it as originating from hiking food prices, which makes them to keep borrowing in order to have what to eat or else survive on nothing. But whose responsibility is it to end hunger and poverty? Whose realities count the most?
Food on the table and money in the pocket
Why not allow the plight, prospects and success of the poor and hungry guide our investment? As we surveyed 3000 farmers, 50 bulk buyers and 60 input sellers in Nakaseke, Mukono, Wakiso, Kampala, and Mpigi districts, it becomes evident that farmers are specific and aware of what keeps them penniless and unable to keep food on the table. Conclusions were overly centred on sentiments like:
We are tired of government handouts. How far the government does thinks it can go with this method? Let them provide us with markets and we shall take care of our needs. Currently whatever we produce rots in stores – the beans, maize etc. Farmers are discouraged to follow any one’s advice any more. Those who can are moving to the nearest towns for alternative sources of income....
It is frustrating for us, we sell our produce so low and we buy other necessities of life so high. Who is benefiting from our sweet? Can’t someone do something for us?
It is like no one cares for the farmers. The politicians just come when it is time for asking for votes with a bar of soap, a kilo of sugar etc. And thereafter they never think about us again. The middlemen only tell us what helps them pay the least for our produce.
Food vendors equally feel being held by the neck, in an economy where the biggest part of the population spends over 70% of their income on food. Vendors tell that, they receive the food at very high prices to get it to the last consumers any cheaper. Conclusions were overly centred on the sentiment below:
By the time food gets to this market, it has passed through hands of seven or more people – starting with those buying an about to mature garden to the ones getting it here.
The farmers’ and vendors’ sentiments combined, mean that farmers lose most o their real harvest, not to; pests, poor inputs, poor storage, etc. but to the vulturing behaviour of middlemen. This reduces farmers’ income by several folds and discourages them from producing more. It also reduces the volume of money available for circulation in the hand of the rural folks – thus putting the farmers into further poverty and hunger. The negative force middlemen have in the fight against hunger and poverty couldn’t be painted better without this typical case occurring during our preliminary survey:
A buyer offered a Sweet potato farmer, UGX 20,000 per 100 kg sack, after transporting it from his farm in Kigogwa, in Wakiso district to Kitebi, a suburb of Kampala district. Because he knew the going market price, the farmer refused the offer and was able to negotiate UGX 65,000 per sack; representing more than three-fold in more income for the farmer.
It is not for the reader to note that this was not the first case to encounter nor was it by any chance going to be the last. By the way of mobile phones, and small cases of telecentres, similar cases are captured or have been captured. The bother was then about whether the incremental benefits came at a higher incremental cost to the farmer or not. The above farmer had used UGX 10,000 to transport his produce to the market, which was only a plus for him, on balancing expense against income. It remains for answering, though, if the typical case above is scalable to address the predicaments food marketing. Can the middlemen really be eliminated? What do they really do in the chain?
Let rot or sell low!
The demand and supply seem to govern everything today. The surprising bit, though, is how the advocates of rural development downplay this matter. The farmer buys everything just to fail to sell or sell at a loss. Basing on business laws, if expenditure exceeds income or benefits are less than investment or profits are less than losses, it would only be a question of time for such investment, be it; for profit, government or not-for-profit, to collapse. Yet small-scale farmers survive in this kind of environment. Every day passing, farmers are faced with the tough decision of either to let rot their produce or sell at a price lower than expenditure: due to lack of access to markets or due to fewer buyers in an environment where produce is uneconomically abundant, at a given point. The context is brought to light by the farmer’s sentiment below:
The toiling starts in securing a loan, working the land, moving into production and in the end everybody in the village comes out with the same product. It is at this time that many of us discover that market conditions haven’t changed an inch and that we can’t recovery our invested monies, as sales are completed. In the end, microfinance people come and take our things for failed payment of loans – this leaves us wandering, are we heading to richness or more poverty!
Observations indicated that it didn’t matter whether the farmer changed his enterprise or enterprise mix or not, the problem eventually cropped back in the long-run. But what does it take to unlock the marketing puzzle that farmers have today!
The question regarding marketing called us to look at the: number of distribution channel levels, distribution intensity and types of intermediaries involved in the distribution channel. However, whatever the distribution channel that serves the intermediary role, channel members were found to play the role of: 1) gathering and distributing market information and intelligence, 2) soliciting or scouting for and spreading communications about offers, 3) finding contacts and communicating them to or with prospective buyers and sellers, 4) adjusting the offers to fit buyer-seller needs including quality control e.g. grading, assembling and packaging, 5) negotiating agreement on price and other terms of the offers, 6) transportation and storage, 7) acquiring and using funds to cover the cost of distribution channel and 8) taking commercial risks for operating the channel e.g stockholding, breaking bulk etc. And in the end, they were to be paid for their services – of course by the farmer willingly or not.
Buy or forfeit to the next buyer
As we move closer to the solution; the question from the farmers is whether time is really closer for them to tell middlemen to buy or forfeit the produce to the next buyer – within the community or buyers that a farmer can or has contacted from outside markets. And, yet, the answer to this doesn’t come easily. It lays in how far alternative solutions can be found to replace the roles played by the intermediaries – thus making this piece the main challenge for us to fill next or else leave small scale farmers in hunger and poverty. As people working in and with information and communication tools, our most immediate reflections where to find out a single or a blend of ICTs tools that could be used to address the farmers’ plight as it also contributes to efforts of ending poverty and hunger – which was our stating point!
Social investor of this process is CTA and implementer is UgaBYTES
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