• EDITORIAL POLICY
  • ABOUT US
PML Daily
  • Home
  • NEWS
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Regional
    • Africa
    • World
  • INVESTIGATIONS
    • National Archives
    • Special Reports
  • OpEd
  • BUSINESS
    • Agriculture
    • Tech
    • Finance
  • FEATURES
    • Health
    • Tours & Travel
    • Entertainment
    • Society
  • COLUMNISTS
    • The Suited Penguin
  • SPORT
  • Jobs
  • Magazines
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • NEWS
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Regional
    • Africa
    • World
  • INVESTIGATIONS
    • National Archives
    • Special Reports
  • OpEd
  • BUSINESS
    • Agriculture
    • Tech
    • Finance
  • FEATURES
    • Health
    • Tours & Travel
    • Entertainment
    • Society
  • COLUMNISTS
    • The Suited Penguin
  • SPORT
  • Jobs
  • Magazines
No Result
View All Result
PML Daily
No Result
View All Result
Home BUSINESS Agriculture

Problems of selling farm products

MICHEAL J. SSALI | PML Daily Associate Writer by MICHEAL J. SSALI | PML Daily Associate Writer
December 2, 2019
in Agriculture
0 0
1
SHARES
339
VIEWS
FacebookWhatsAppTwitter
A farmer harvesting tomatoes (PHOTO/Daily Monitor)

KAMPALA – How free are the farmers to sell their produce at the best prices in order to achieve maximum profits? Most Ugandan farmers don’t have that freedom and they are often exploited by traders and middlemen, which has made farming seem unprofitable and a poor man’s job. A number of factors are to blame.

Most farmers are vulnerable and are not in a position to decide on their own. They normally go into the production of commodities whose selling prices are not in a position to determine although they are the producers.

A farmer sets out to grow tomatoes or watermelon and then keeps worrying if the prices will be good by the time of harvesting the crops. It would seem, they are not the owners of their produce since it is the trader to decide how much to pay.

Due to the large size of most families, there is a constant shortage of money in nearly all households. Emergencies such as school fees or sickness often force farmers to sell their crops at low prices. A coffee farmer asks for advance payment from a trader for the coffee berries that are still green.

The trader sets a price which the needy farmer must accept. A month or two later, when the coffee is ripe, the trader harvests it from the farmer’s garden, dries it, processes it, and sells it at thrice the price he bought it.

This happens nearly always in most farming households every time there is an emergency.

Whenever the farmer puts himself at the mercy of a middleman to determine the price of a farm product he ends up the loser because most traders are Shylocks of sorts.

The majority of farmers have no storage facilities for perishable products like vegetables, bananas, fruits, milk, and eggs which they struggle to sell off quickly before they get spoilt. Often farmers have to accept the prices offered by the traders out of fear of losing the products when they get rotten. Yet producing the items involves purchasing inputs like pesticides, feeds, and medications whose prices remain high regardless of the products’ unpredictable marketing challenges.

Since we depend on rain-fed agriculture, most crops are produced at the same time, usually, following a rainy season and when all the other farmers have the same items in plenty. Excessive produce results in low prices for the farmer.

Comments

Tags: farm productstop

Related Posts

NEWS

Vote counting in Uganda’s general elections starts

January 15, 2021
94
President Yoweri Museveni casts his ballot at Karo secondary school polling station in Rushere District
NEWS

Ugandans go to polls amid raging COVID-19 pandemic

January 15, 2021
65
The East African Community Election Observer Mission (EAC-EOM) delegation are in a meeting at Imperial Royal hotel in Kampala, Uganda, Jan. 12, 2021. The East African Community Election Observer Mission (EAC-EOM) delegation on Tuesday called for free and fair general elections in Uganda slated for Thursday as the EAC-EOM dispatched a team of 74 observers to different parts of the country. (Photo by Hajarah Nalwadda/Xinhua)
NEWS

Regional observers call for free and fair general elections in Uganda

January 15, 2021
45
The Ethiopian National Defence Force on Wednesday afternoon announced the death of former Ethiopian foreign minister, Seyoum Mesfin during a battle in the country’s northern Tigray regional state.
NEWS

Ethiopia’s former foreign minister killed in battle

January 15, 2021
146
In this photo illustration, the logos of the messaging applications, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and Facebook are displayed on the screen. (PHOTO/File)
NEWS

Uganda blocks social media ahead of presidential, parliamentary elections

January 13, 2021
80
President Museveni has said local coronavirus vaccine trials to begin on December 15 (PHOTO/Courtesy).
Politics

Museveni promises free, fair elections

January 13, 2021
116






 

 

About

The PML Daily, published via www.pmldaily.com is a publication of Post Media Ltd, a professional Digital/New Media company in Uganda.

Follow us

KIU

  • EDITORIAL POLICY
  • ABOUT US

© 2020 PMLDAILY.COM

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • NEWS
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Regional
    • Africa
    • World
  • INVESTIGATIONS
    • National Archives
    • Special Reports
  • OpEd
  • BUSINESS
    • Agriculture
    • Tech
    • Finance
  • FEATURES
    • Health
    • Tours & Travel
    • Entertainment
    • Society
  • COLUMNISTS
    • The Suited Penguin
  • SPORT
  • Jobs
  • Magazines

© 2020 PMLDAILY.COM

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In