For the better part of of the last decade, I’ve been building something. Perhaps I should have been writing more about it while I was building but sometimes you get so much into the weeds (pun intended) that Twitter becomes an easy escape rather than the introspective exercise of long-form writing.
Recently, I was invited by a colleague at Tufts University to write about my work at Raintree Farms. It took three requests before I actually agreed to do it. I’d never previously done any form of academic writing so the experience was quite eye-opening. As a long time blogger, I was devoid of any knowledge of formal writing and academic citation. So the whole process was 3 grueling months of editing rounds. But finally, it got done, dusted, and published last month.
What did I write about? In the course of building Raintree Farms, one of the issues we kept coming across in trying to work with subsistence farmers at the last mile of development was the fact that while farmers knew how to farm, they seldom had a money to invest in their farms beyond growing food. transitioning to commercial farming requires resources. So we developed a program called the Secure Income Program that—in short—paid them incrementally as they transitioned to commercial farming.
I don’t was to give it all away here, but here’s the opening few paragraphs. Kindly click on the link to read the whole paper (it’s short actually, just under 4,000 words) and let me know what you think.
ABSTRACT
Over 70 percent of Uganda’s work force is in agriculture. Yet, that collec- tive workforce represents less than 25 percent of the fertile East African country’s GDP. With over 7 million farmers in the country earning less than USD 2 per day and fighting the severe effects of climate change, it is clear that a new model is needed to lift subsistence farmers out of poverty while protecting the environment. After spending over a decade trying to find a solution to this problem, I developed the Secure Income Program (SIP) to address shortcomings in the solutions offered to farmers. In this article, I explore the potential of SIP to not only lift rural communities in Uganda out of poverty, but also to create a supply chain model that could prove beneficial to agriculture companies and the environment. However, as with all ambitious solutions, SIP must overcome numerous challenges on the difficult journey to sustainability.
A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF UGANDA’S AGRICULTURAL SECTOR
For over a decade, I have been trying to find an answer as to why Ugandan farmers are perpetually poor. To understand the problem, we must first look at how agriculture fits into Uganda’s economy. The country is known for its rich agricultural heritage thanks to its diverse climate that can support a wide range of crops. In 1908, then-explorer Winston Churchill, amazed at what he saw on a visit to the then-British colony, declared “for magnificence, for variety of form and color, for profusion of brilliant life—bird, insect, reptile, beast—for vast scale—Uganda is truly the Pearl of Africa.”1 So fertile is the country that it has been said that you can throw a seed anywhere in Uganda and it will grow.The Pearl of Africa’s agricultural exports are coffee, tea, bananas, tobacco, and flowers—to name but a few. Over 70 percent of working age adults are employed in the agriculture sector,2 yet agriculture makes up less than 25 percent of the country’s overall GDP as of 2020/2021 statistics.3
These two statistics signal low productivity in the agricultural sector. Most Ugandan farmers are subsistence farmers, growing only enough to feed their families and trading any limited surplus crops for money. These farmers utilize manual tools with limited access to modern technology to increase yields and often rely solely on labor from their immediate family members: food first, money later—if at all. Due to the informal nature of subsistence farming activity, a large portion of the output from subsistence farming is not captured in Uganda’s GDP because most of the output is consumed by the farmers themselves.4 The agriculture sector is also domi- nated by middlemen who can only increase their profits by underpaying farmers for commodity crops. The less they pay farmers, the more they can increase their profits, as it is difficult to raise the price of their goods. The result is a squeeze down on farmers. This uneven relationship results in a perpetually undercapitalized workforce. Climate change, which makes every harvest season unpredictable, also exacerbates the problem. No longer can farmers trust generations of tacit agricultural practices; the timing and severity of rains have become too erratic. The most vulnerable families still lack up-to-date weather predictions and modern agricultural information.
You can read the full paper here at the Fletcher Forum for World Affairs
