Livelihoods Enhanced

Smallholder farming households adopting best practices for farming as a business by harmonizing production and ensuring quality produce so as to access remunerative markets:

• Growing the same crop variety by a group of farmers.
• Use best practice in post harvest handling.
• Label bags for traceability of produce to original home/source.
• Established and funded a marketing committee to look for a buyer(s)

Findings of a 2014 CPAR Uganda impact survey that was conducted by external consultants, for example, found:

• 74% of beneficiary farmer field school groups were engaged in collective marketing through their parish level structures.
• Beneficiary groups succeed in establishing commercial relationship with produce buying and processing companies.
• Increased abilities among benefiting farmers in relating with other value chain actors in the crops which they produce.
• Increased confidence of the other actors in beneficiary farmers who have organised themselves in marketing collectives.
• Group marketing is impacting positively on the income levels of beneficiary farmers.
• Beneficiary farmers who bulked and collectively marketed their produce received better prices as compared to those who sold unilaterally.

This is one example of how beneficiaries adopting and applying knowledge and technologies they accessed from CPAR Uganda is improving lives.

In this case adopting and applying collective marketing smallholder farming households reduced transaction costs for taking produce to the market and increased their bargaining power.

Read more insights in “Farming as a business”

Mission

CPAR Uganda is on a mission to stimulate the development. dissemination, and widespread application of technologies suitable for conditions in developing countries, in order to contribute to building healthy communities.

In 2014/2015, we did exactly that and we are proud of our achievements