How cooperation and new technology bring a traditional crop into the 21st century

“Why do we invest in onion nurseries and demo plots? Because we don’t want our youth to end up as hobo’s and vagabonds, that’s why!”, Augustine laughs.

Augustine Okware has been an onion farmer in Kwapa, Uganda his whole life. He takes pride in his work and happily sacrifices a part of his land to an onion nursery so he can share his experience with the younger generation farmers. “High quality seedlings can make a big difference in the yield of a harvest. This way I can help other, younger farmers with getting a decent income,” Augustine explains.

VECO East Africa is assisting onion farmers in Kwapa with setting up several nurseries and demonstration plots, to showcase learnings and to share experiences. Kwapa farmers have been growing onions for generations, but traditionally they used to grow another variety of onion than the type they are growing now.

“We used to grow a variety of onions called ‘red bombay’. VECO suggested to switch to the ‘red creole’ type. Once harvested, these onions last much longer than the previous type.”, explains Patrick Paddy, another farmer, “It took some time to convince us (about 6 months), because the seeds of red creole onions are more expensive than those of red bombay onions, but the results speak for themselves!”

Just by switching the variety, Kwapa farmers have been able to reduce post-harvest losses significantly, as well as increase the price they get on the market.

In a next step, Peter Businda, VECO’s responsible program officer, encouraged farmers to create a local ACE 'Kwapa Farmers Cooperative', a member based organization that champions the interests of farmers by collective marketing and group purchases, hereby reducing transaction costs. “We started one year ago with just 15 farmers, now we have over 200 members. We are very grateful for VECO’s assistance in making this a success, providing us with guidance on how to manage this and offering training to our members to improve their farming skills.”, says Joseph Awala, chairman of the Kwapa Farmers Cooperative. “The future looks bright, because now we are also starting negotiations with retailers like Nakumatt, Tusky’s, Shoprite, Urban Wholesalers,… .”

The onion farmers in Kwapa are a great example on how VECO’s approach can help link up farmers to modern markets. As a group they stand stronger than ever before and they are motivated to keep on improving.

Renovation works have started on a previous cotton store, which will be paid for by member contributions. They plan to use this as a storage, grading and packaging centre. In the near future the Kwapa farmers also hope to look into improving irrigation methods. “At this moment we have 2 harvests per year. With an efficient irrigation system this can go up to 3 or 4 harvests. Slowly but surely we are creating a better future for ourselves”, Patrick Paddy smiles.