Stop Cutting the Farmer’s Hand; End Overexploitation of Farmers

Visit the farm and enquire about how much they sell a unit of their farm produce and then proceed to the market and try buying the same unit of the product. The difference in prices will shock you.

Last week, I spent a significant amount of time in the farms and as well interacted with the markets. As a farmer, I was harvesting my kales and when I took them to the market as a farmer, a unit kilogram of my kales was going for Kes 5. Surprising, those buying from me would just take the kales and sell at Kes 20 per kilogram. This would mean triple the buying price. Again, I interacted with tomato farmers who were selling a crate at Kes 400 which would then be sold by the middlemen for over Kes 1,000. Later on the same week, I visited some potato farmers in a totally different area. Again, they were facing the same fate as myself and the tomato farmers. And my question was, who deserves more reward, is it the farmer or the middlemen?

Farming remains the major economic activity of most communities in Africa and a key drive of economic development. Millions of people are employed or earn their living through farming while countries receive billions of dollars as revenue to drive their development. All these can be attributed to the tiring work that farmers engage in daily in their farms. But the reward they receive do not match their efforts and much of their effort is eaten by the exploiting middlemen.

Before getting that produce to the market, it is the farmer who bears the cost of production. From land preparation, sourcing of seedlings, fertilizers and pesticides, management of the crops, the labor involved, and the time invested daily. It is the farmer who bears the risk of any possible loss. Yet, when the produce is ready, the farmer gets the least reward. Is this truly doing justice to the farmers? Is this truly supporting and promoting agriculture. Can we confidently say that this is protecting the farmers and the future of agriculture?

As we encourage more youths to venture into agriculture, are we working to make it attractive and rewarding enough or are we preparing them to navigate the market challenges?

Governments have been developing policies that seek to protect the farmers from these exploiters but there has been a challenge of policy implementation. Most Africa’s governments and mandated institutions have been reluctant to protect the farmers or rather to follow up on the implementation of the existing policies. There have been mere talks as the middlemen continue overexploiting the farmers. As the cost of production go up each day, farmers are finding it hard to continue producing and the sustainability and attractiveness of agriculture is slowly reducing.

We must act now and protect one of the greatest pillars of Africa’s sustainable development. We must protect our farmers from overexploitation and ensure that their efforts are rewarded, and that farming is attractive. Additionally, we must all work to develop market mechanisms and digitization that will allow the farmers to sell their produce at the comfort of their farms.