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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.
Rockford Harris Group 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 incidence of poverty in Uganda and Butaleja District a model.
We are mobilizing rural smallholder farmers into enteprise groups that will be a foundation for the formation of "village
companies". Establishment of a Modern Paddy Rice Drying & Milling Plant & WRS Services.
The project components are built on a strategic public-private partnership bringing many value-chain actors under
one umbrella. The strategic goal is to develop the rice commodity chain by improving efficiency at all levels of the value
chain.
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| Warehouse Reciept Systems(WRS) & Storage |
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| Warehouse Reciept Systems(WRS) & Storage |
The UN Declaration on MDGs is a global collective
effort by the human community to reduce modern history challenges to man kind. Rockford Harris Group,a social enteprise
group of young community development specialists, 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.
Rice value and commodity chain development is a critical intervention in rural poverty reduction. 80% of Africa's population
is rural based,engaged in subsistence agriculture due to lack of market access. Building effecient and effective value and
commodity chains is vital in our efforts to combat household poverty.
WRS & AGROPROCESSING PROTOCOL DOWNLOAD
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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.
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