“We can do this slowly by slowly, if we put all our thoughts to it,” Rachael Amol, an urban farmer pointed out as the farmers visited Lans greenhouse farms. The farms are engaged in greenhouse tomato growing, right from growing the tomatoes, packing it and sending it to the market. The farm uses high productive methods, with at least 60kg produced per square metre.
It is an epitome of farming organisation, right from the farm to the processing/packaging and marketing. The farm is run with pin point detail and perfection.
The Best Farmers had arrived in the Netherlands on a Sunday morning, after an eight-hour flight by KLM, the Royal Dutch airlines, that sponsor the tickets for the farmers. They are hosted in the Netherlands by the government of the Netherlands, through the Embassy of the Netherlands in Uganda. The other sponsors of Uganda’s Best Farmers competition are dfcu Bank and Koudijs Nutrition BV.
“I do not see any Ugandan farmer doing something like this effectively,” observed Julius Bigabwa. Bigabwa, like some of his fellow farmers blamed Ugandan farmers for lack of detail and efficiency in whatever they do.
The bottom line is the efficiency of the systems in the Netherlands that makes operations effective.
“Can you imagine no body is sited in this farm and packaging unit? You do not see here anybody discussing Arsenal or Manchester United,” Josephat Byaruhanga, the senior policy officer at the Embassy of the Netherlands said. Byaruhanga then asked farmers to pick out the positives from their fellow farmers here, including good farm organisation, adherence to quality of the product and generational continuation of the farms.
“The level of efficiency, especially in the wake of expensive labour costs is what we lack in Uganda,” he said.
Byaruhanga pointed out that because of expensive labour costs and high wages, farms and other enterprises adopted largely robots and machines to do the work.
“It looks expensive at the beginning, but it is cheaper in the long run,” he said.
