By Joshua Kato
As judgement for the 2024 Best Farmers competition enters the final stage, it is clear that majority of Ugandan farmers are not adding value to their produce.
Remember, the theme of the competition this year is value addition. Over the years, President Yoweri Museveni has become more consistent with his calls to stakeholders to reduce the sale of unprocessed foods to the foreign markets.
His argument is that farmers make losses when they sell raw foods.
Museveni uses an example of coffee, where he says after processing, a kilogramme of ready-to-drink coffee cost $40 (sh140,000) in Europe compared to sh3,500, for unprocessed coffee.
You need two kilogrammes of unprocessed coffee to get a kilogramme of fine refined coffee. Nearly every agriculture product can be improved on the farm, however in reality, farmers sell over 90% of these in raw form.
Value addition does not start with the actual processing, but at planting. Selecting the best breeds or varieties is the first step to value addition.
Then during management, the practices that you select either add value or reduce it.
For example, if you use dangerous farm chemicals, then you are devaluing your product.
Using only recommended farm chemicals and in the right doses ensures that your product will pass into the niche markets.
Then during harvesting and post-harvest, make sure that you follow the right practices, so that you do not damage the product or cause it to attract elements like aflatoxins.
But overall, farmers must be assisted to understand value addition, first through sensitisation and then by providing equipment.
