Family Farming Knowledge Platform

Strengthening Producer Organizations to unleash productive potential of smallholder farmers in Uganda

Producer organizations (PO) can improve market access, lower transaction costs and increase the profits of smallholder farmers by offsetting diseconomies of scale (Heyer et al., 1999; Hill et al., 2008; The World Bank, 2008). Yet, evidence for Sub-Saharan Africa shows that POs often fail to attain these objectives. Instead of acting collectively, PO members frequently opt for engaging in markets (and with local traders) individually (Fafchamps and Hill, 2005; Hill, 2010). Two types of organizational weaknesses are held responsible for this reluctance on the part of the PO members: Firstly, PO sales procedures commonly cause substantial delays in payments which adversely affects cash constrained farmers and, secondly, PO members lack access to reliable information about the final sales prices that PO leaders 1negotiate when selling the members’ harvest.

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Author: Markus Olapadea
Other authors: Markus Fr¨olichb, Ruth Hill-Vargasd , Eduardo Maruyamae
Organization: University of Mannheim
Other organizations: World Bank, International Food Policy Research Institute
Year: 2014
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Country/ies: Uganda
Geographical coverage: Africa
Type: Working paper
Content language: English
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