This is from Julie Nakalanda Matovu, again.
Thanks for all your submissions. This is a very lively discussion, it touches our lives, our work, our heritage and our future.
To Klaus Fleissner (Message 31): Thanks for your positive comment. We need to be honest to ourselves in order to establish where the real problem lies.
I go so biased by the topics of interest that I forgot to mention that I'm also a farmer. Like other professions, people may study law, medicine etc. but never actually practice it because of given magnitude of engagement at their respective jobs or offices of service, which may be political. Sometimes it is necessary for us to walk the talk. Along the way as a service provider, by choice I decided to engage in farming as a smallholder organic farmer. I do farming one day every week. For my masters thesis, I researched about The effectiveness of Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) In marketing of Organic products among small scale farmers in Uganda. A case study of vegetable growers in Wakiso and Kampala District. I thereafter mobilized a team of women doing organic farming, we are now engaged into a commercial business [at small scale], we do weekly deliveries (Nakalanda and Kugonza, 2015). While establishing this, we got all those setbacks you all know. Moving 3 steps forward, then 2 steps back. It has taken us three years to get established. The scheme is now growing steadily. We also have a Village Savings and Loan Association, we save on a weekly basis. These are very complementary initiatives. Back to the point, for all our submissions, if there could be a way to move along with the farmers, "feel" the pinch. Whereas it is very important to set targets, work in defined time frames, we also need to reconsider these issues so that we can get realistic progress. Through this discussion, I'm already seeing answers to the questions we ponder about. So it seems just need to figure out what works in our local contexts.
Julie Nakalanda Matovu
Lead Consultant
Juls Consults - Agribusiness & Sustainable Development
Gombe B,
Bukasa Parish,
Wakiso District,
Uganda
+256 772-63-66-88 or +256-701-63-66-88
e-mail: Matovujuls (at) gmail.com
Julie M. Nakalanda and B. Irene Kugonza. 2015. Facilitating social networks by linking smallholder organic farmers in Uganda to markets for sustainable products through Freshveggies PGS. Case study 11 in "Sustainable practices, sustainable markets? Exploring institutional innovations that link sustainable agricultural practices with markets", edited by Allison Loconto, Anne Sophie Poisot and Pilar Santacoloma. FAO. In Press.
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