In the remote village of Magada, Magada Sub-county in Namutumba District, farmers are revolutionalising their agricultural practices by adopting post- harvest technologies to minimise losses and maximise profits from their produce.
The farmers under their cooperative, Magada United Rice Farmers Cooperative Society Limited, previously produced poor quality rice due to poor post-harvest handling methods. These included harvesting rice using traditional methods, as well as drying their harvested rice on the bare ground.
Now, with the acquisition of rice thresher and storage facilities, farmers say post-harvest losses have been reduced.
‘Previously, we would cut and leave the rice in the paddy field for three or four days which would destroy it. On other days, we would dry harvested rice on the ground due to lack of tarpaulins,’ Ms Tapenence Namugaya on Saturday. ‘This meant the end product contained stones which fetched a low price,’ she adds.
Ms Namugaya is one of beneficiaries of Agra Cereals project being implemented by Kilimo Trust. The project is focused on reducing post-harvesting losses, improving grain quality and increasing market access for farmers in over nine districts in the eastern region.
The three-year project, running from 2024 to 2027, targets maize, beans and rice value chains, promotes efficient post – harvesting handling through provision of threshers, shellers and solar dryers to ensure quality grain.
About 105,000 smallholder farmers in the target districts of Bugiri, Iganga, Namutumba, Bulambuli, Mbale and Kween found in the Sub-regions of Busoga, Bugisu and Sebei have been trained on post- harvest handling practices for maize, beans and rice.
Mr Samuel Kiirya, another rice farmer in Magada sub-County said under the project, they have signed agreements with traders who buy their grain at better prices compared to middlemen. Mr Moses Mushebo, the chairperson of the association says as a cooperative with over 1,000 farmers, they now have access to hermetic storage bags.
‘Hermetic bags keep pests and moisture levels low, extending the shelf life of grains,’ he says, adding that each farmer now harvests about 500 kilogrammes of rice. Formerly, Mr Mushebo said, without a rice thresher, a farmer would spend about four days to harvest a four acre rice field.
‘The rice thresher is improving our produce because immediately after harvesting the rice you thresh it and return with it to the field on same day for more harvests,’ he says.
Significant losses
In Busoba Town Council, Butaleja District, Mr Paul Wananda, who received a solar dryer on behalf of Busoba Rural Farmers Association, said drying and preserving maize had been a challenge.
‘We often made significant losses due to poor drying and storage practices. That affected our income from the grain and also food security,’ Mr Wananda said.
The solar dryer, Mr Wananda said, would prevent mold growth and also preserves the quality of the maize. Mr Stephen Ekoom, the chief executive officer of the Farmers Guide Uganda Limited, said solar dryers ensure that the grains are not exposed to direct sunlight, winds and contamination.
‘The high temperatures deter insects and the risk of spoilage from microorganisms,’ he says.
Ms Rachel Ajambo, the country team leader, Uganda Kilimo Trust sayid they have since distributed service handling technologies including solar dryers, maize threshers, maize shellers, rice threshers and beans threshers, with the main aim of increasing the quality of the grain that is traded in our local markets and also in the regional markets to prevent future cases of rejection of Ugandan produce.
‘Without these technologies, farmers dry these commodities on the bare ground and this increases the input of foreign matters, for example, stones, animal dung, and things like this, which automatically reduce the quality,’ she said, adding that they have also linked farmers to structured markets.
‘We have several buyers that have been linked to these farmers. And so far, we have seen about 14,000 metric tons traded through these market linkages,’ she says, urging farmers to get organized in groups and adopt good agricultural practices and good post-harvest handling practices to ensure that they capture regional markets, which are more profitable.
Her call was reechoed by Mr Alex Ewinyu, the technical assistant, Kilimo Trust, who said there is an improvement of quality grain trade being traded with adoption of alternative energy post -harvest processes such as drying and threshing.
‘This is the goal of the project – to ensure that farmers actually get to produce quality grain,’ he says.