I am working with Pig Production and Marketing Uganda Limited. Current chairman of Watubba Pig Farmers Association in Wakiso district, Nangabo subcounty.
My name is Christopher Mulindwa from Uganda. I am one of the directors of Pig Production & Marketing Uganda Limited and the chairman of Watubba Pig Farmers Association. I do my work with rural farmers and mostly those involved in piggery.
My discussion here will mainly focus on co-operatives in my country Uganda.
Farmer organisations are very impotant to both farmers and community development. United farmers can share ideas, are easy to help and can combine efforts to work out tasks that are difficult to a single farmer like bulk production, input purchase, mechanisation, transportation and many others. Collective savings enables them mount a certain amount of money which can be used to extend credit facilities to themselves escaping the tuff terms and conditions of banks and money lenders. Therefore before governments, NGOs, companies and any other body think about extending grants, loans and any other assistance to farmers must first think about how to get farmers organised.
The major reason as to why most rural farmers in Uganda live in poverty is because they are poorly organised. This has been caused by development bodies poor approach to agriculture development, they have not emphasised the importance of unity among farmers.
For purposes of creating/strengthening farmer organisations, concerned bodies should create an environment where farmers don't get into organisations to recieve donations, assistance or support from them.
In case of shortages, such co-operatives will collapse. Let farmers first understand the importance of co-operatives, create them, sustain them for some time and then assistance comes later. With this approach, farmers contribution towards their own organisations can be easily traced and all farmers will be equally responsible for their groups hence their sustainability.
The fact that most farmers here are not educated and yet should be responsible for their organisation management make us think about management capabilities. Training facilities should be extended to farmers, the introduction of adult education in rural areas would be a right approach to this. Am not in any way recommending strangers to take part in farmer organisations leadership, it is farmers who know who should manage their co-operatives.
Information access is another serious issue, most development bodies provide reading materials in foreign languages for example English which most farmers cannot read and understand. Efforts should be combined together among donors,implementors and farmers to translate all useful literature into local languages that can be read and understood by farmers. This literature should be highly simplified, easy and interesting to read. Expressing information by use of pictures and diagrams would be a right approach.
The use of mobile phones is greatly becoming a cheap and easily accesible means of information. Different innovations should be brought to space in relation to this in order to easy communication and information sharing among farmers.
According to what I have observed, most people here especially the youth regard farming as a failure's job because it is farmers who are living a very poor life, there is few commercial farmers in Uganda.
Subsistance farming is the common activity and also not practiced to its fullness because some farmers may even fail to produce what is enough for their faimilies. Co-operatives would be good actors in eroding this perception out of youth minds, previous census stated that most of the Ugandans are youth making close to 19 Million of tatal population so they would have been the largest food producers in our country. The best approach here would be training farmers from their respective local councils in partnership with their local administration.
For the countries like Uganda whose backbone is agriculture, the government should be more concerned about implementing policies that favor co-operative development. The issue of corruption and embezzlement of funds will be no more if government policies involve farmers in decission making. Farmers will know how to fight for their rights and eliminate wrong characters.
Regards,
Christopher Mulindwa
Sr. Christopher Mulindwa
Research for development, casSe of Pig Production and Marketing Uganda Limited and International Livestock Research Institute.
Uganda has the most rapidly growing pig industry in East Africa; this is indicated by increasing pig population for the last 3 decades from 0.19 to over 3.2 Million – UBOS in 2008. Uganda also has the best per capita consumption of pork in Sub-Saharan Africa (3.4Kg/Person/year) – FAOSTAT. Over 1.1 Million households (UBOS 2008) keep pigs in Uganda.
The sector is faced by a number of constraints and amongst all is limited access to production information and dynamic markets by smallholder pig farmers.
A company (Pig Production and Marketing Uganda Limited - 2012) owned by two youthful entrepreneurs who were pig farmers themselves was initiate to solve mainly the constraints of both market and information access together with production services.
Youth led businesses face many problems and this may be the reason why most of these collapse in earlier stages of growth. These problems rage from lack of business training, access to finance, inadequate resources to pay consultants and others.
The International Livestock Research Institute initiated a research project on pigs in Uganda and unlike other research programs, their project focused on the whole pig value chain. This gave benefit to the company because later, it was selected as one of project partners. The company is making efficient use of the experts at the project office. They offer advisory services and bridging relationship between company and other value chain actors; this is done at no cost.
The institute sponsored company leaders to acquire business skills from Kenya to enable proper business management. This is on addition of different trainings to build potential of the team to initiate, manage and evaluate trainings with farmers. As a result, the company has held two successful pig farmer trainings last year. Through the trainings, farmers realized the importance of working together as team hence the birth of Uganda National Pig Farmers Association whose registration is underway.
The unconditional sharing of research output backed by relevant advice on proper entrepreneurial actions is helping the company progress with success.
The business
Pig Production and Marketing Uganda Limited; slaughter and sale pork, offer consultancy and advisory services on pigs and sale breeding stock. The company’s core product is pork but because there is no other institution supporting farmers to produce quality farm products, the company is handling other products and services as indicated above. For slaughter pigs are sourced from various farmers attached to the company, this help them access reliable market for their farm produce.
Currently, this company is the only institution doing for profit business on pigs in Uganda.
Marketing is such expensive, the company opted to use the internet to market its products. Social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) were created and constantly used to market company products. Website and blogging sites were also created to market and offer production information to farmers.
Finance is remaining a major constraint because banks are not willing to give credit without reliable security. The company is handling the constraint by managing credit systems with suppliers on addition of different strategies to acquire funds with assistance from International Livestock Research Institute.