The Agribusiness Business Development Centre (ADC) in partnership with SEATINI has today concluded a two days training on price risk management in response to the needs of the coffee and cocoa farmers and exporters.
The ADC hosted 40 representatives of Farmer Based Organizations from different regions in the East, West, and Central. The training focused on the market fundamentals of demand and supply.
The participants of the training had a chance to get an in-depth market analysis by the ADC business advisors who emphasized the need for traders to always give updates on the ground in respect to logistics management to earn trust from their contractors.
The ADC business advisor, Roland Ainebyona Rwambuka said that farmers are exposed to a number of internal and external risks, adding that the training equipped them with strategies to mitigate the risks.
“This training is to enhance their capacity to come up with strategies and tools to use to mitigate the risks to improve their efficiency. There is no business without risk, therefore, the role of the farmers is to be well prepared to mitigate these risks,” he said.
The world coffee production for 2022/23 is forecast to rebound 7.8M bags from the previous year to 175M due primarily to Brazil’s Arabica crop entering the on-year of the biennial production cycle.
Brendah Akankunda from SEATINI who was the main partner during the training said their main concern is to make sure there are fair prices for the farmers, no violations of rights along the value chains, to encourage value addition because Uganda has been trapped at the lower end of the chain.
“Throughout our various engagements with stakeholders, we have seen the need for capacity building and this training is addressing that,” she added.
The main objective of ADC work is to make the agribusiness self sufficient and profitable.
Charles Wataaka from Nassaga Investment Ltd narrated how their coffee was scored as the best but they were not selling to international market.
“For me, I am a typical farmer which means I understand things at a local level, and yet, as a leader of the organization, I need to be getting market for the coffee that we are producing. We were operating like an island but during the first training of the ADC, it opened my eyes on how to negotiate for international markets, and learnt how to coordinate and network with other coffee producers. In fact, from the training in March, we got a buyer who desired to buy our coffee and we were to negotiate and understand the incoterms that secured us a good deal. I appeal to the ADC and SEATINI with other stakeholders to expand this training to our regions,” he said.