Agribusiness Enteprise Uganda

Agribusiness Enterprise Development-Butaleja Uganda

Warehouse Reciept Systems(WRS) & Storage

Warehouse Reciept Systems(WRS) & Storage

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The UN Declaration on MDGs is a global collective effort by the human community to reduce modern history challenges to human kind. The Home of Agribusiness Enterprise Uganda under, Rockford Harris Group, believes in playing a role in facilitating the efforts of the global society in achieving the MDG targets through agribusiness enterprise development. Butaleja has been adopted as a pilot village project where lesson learnt will be replicated elsewhere in the Country and in the global community.

WRS & AGROPROCESSING PROTOCOL DOWNLOAD

Agribusiness enterprise development in Uganda is important for market stimulation in rural communities. 80% of Ugandans are engaged in agriculture, unfortunately, the collapse of the cooperative movement and the liberalization of the agricultural sector fragmented rural farmers exposing them to tough market conditions.

The Home of Agribusiness Enterprise Development works to facilitate the Ware House Reciept System (WRS) to facilitate farmer group formation, skills development, collective marketing and collective storage of agro-produce as a tool to improve farm gate prices, improve productivity and therefore reduce the incince of poverty in Uganda and Butaleja District a model.

Innovation & scientific methods of agro-production go hand-in-hand!

EXECITIVE SUMMARY

This report highlights activities, processes and outputs of the Agribusiness Project by Rockford Harris Group. The project has been running since June 2007 in Butaleja District. The Harris Group adopted the district as a model whose findings and experiences shall be used in the replication of the protocol in other districts.
The objectives of the assignment were:

capacity development of farmer institutions into higher level farmer associations for collective marketing
identification of gaps, constraints and possible remedies for developing higher level farmer institutions for collective marketing
development of a database of information on production, marketing and Agri-business firms in Butaleja district
Establishment of a Warehouse Reciept Systems with integrated Information Communications Technologies to improve marketing information tracking and sharing.

The process and methodology involved conducting a baseline study, holding meetings with various stakeholders and training of farmer groups on specific concepts. The results of the baseline study and the work thereafter point to an Agribusiness model that concept of agricultural market brokerage, Warehouse Receipts System and Contract farming. However, for the above concepts to fully function there is need to put in place the building blocks. Activities of this contract focused on putting in place such building blocks and the final desired goal would not be met until work done or foundation built through this project is taken to another level.

It is thus recommended that:

Results and foundation for establishing a WRS for paddy in Doho be further explored. The process stalled due to a conflict of interest by the business community and Doho Rice Farmers Association
Sensitization of small scale farmers about the WRS by the politician should be taken forward to avoid miss representation of the WRS scheme as it was with the business men in the area, or else the farmers miss the opportunity
Opportunities for contract farming identified with big buyers in Kampala and beyond should be further explored and put into reality.
Almost all the farmer groups in place are very weak, not focused, and just exit on paper. Training alone will not improve the cohesiveness of the farmer institutions in the area but rather business opportunities thrown to the farmer groups will attract more farmers to join the groups and even explore more opportunities. The problem therefore is not absence of farmer institutions, or lack of knowledge or sensitization, but a lack of “real” business opportunities through exploitation of existing infrastructures and developing more for farmers with private sector. This can only be achieved through establishing strong private sector linkages.