“In East Africa, the market potential for small-scale agriculture is huge”.

Paul Mbuthia works as a Value Chain Advisor for Vredeseilanden/VECO in East Africa. He is from Kenia and can rely on a rich experience. Time flies during a conversation with Paul. That has much, if not everything, to do with the sharp analyses he makes.

Paul, when you look back to your work over the past years, which are the most outstanding achievements for you?

We are active in a number of specific fields: there is a rice programme in Uganda, and the passion fruit and onion programmes in both Uganda and Tanzania. What draws especially my attention is that a number of farmers’ groups with whom we work have succeeded in working in a more planned and thought-through way. Before, thinking about possible markets was hardly done, or not at all. Often there was no clear view of the market, no idea about possible competitors, let alone about customers’ expectations.

Therefore, together with representatives of the farmers we conducted various market investigations in the field. In fact, starting from there, they themselves came with very clear results. E.g., some crops they grew did not at all meet the demands on the market in terms of quality and variety, but also as for choice of crop. It is very sobering for farmers to establish that in fact nobody is really waiting for what they produce... so there was a need for change. One concrete example: after the market research, a group of rice farmers decided by themselves, with no interference from us, to throw a different tack. They sought the money to invest and purchased seeds of better quality. That was more expensive than what they used before, however the result was an end product of excellent quality, of which they could immediately deliver 10 tonnes to the Nakumatt supermarket. This success made that the group grew from 250 to 905 members in no time.

The most important part of the result is that the new members who join don’t do so because of the support of Vredeseilanden/VECO, but because of the dynamics and approach of the group itself. They join because of the business opportunities, and that is an extremely important change of attitude compared to before, when the support of donor organisations was often the driving force. For me, this proves that our approach is good: ensuring that farmers and their organisations learn to know and understand the market and can also organize themselves accordingly.

In the past we have also achieved nice results with coffee farmers’ organisations. That programme is now taken over by the government and it moreover ensured that we built up a good reputation. The new project, around passion fruit, is a direct consequence thereof. We are seen as an innovative organisation. Our chain and market approach is a way of working that is now also taken over and promoted by other organisations in our region.

In my opinion, the most important result is that we succeed in mitigating the risk for farmers, among other things through study work and market research. If you introduce something new, you must also prove that it works, especially because the farmers we work with are poor. Put yourself in the place of one of those farmers: if you have barely enough to maintain your family, would you dare to take risks? Hence the importance of building evidence through concrete demonstration projects. If farmers literally see the fruits of innovation, then that is the best means of persuasion. Making farmers and their organisations think differently, that is about the best description of what we do.

Here you are clearly talking about the changing role of an organisation like Vredeseilanden/VECO and the way you fill that in. Can you clarify a little more?

The way you cooperate with people is crucial. Even the poorest farmers know very well what they want. You always have to respect that and go along the way with them and take time for them. It is correct that they often don’t work in a good way, usually without actually realizing that. You can then proceed in 2 ways: tell them that they are doing wrong, or allowing them to experience that there are other options and to discover why that is so. So we choose for this second way of working. And yes, that has caused evolution to be very slow at the start of our programmes and that little result was seen. Now, after some years, you see the results and you also see that farmers’ groups are succeeding in consolidating those results. This bears great hopes for the future.

If you look at the future, what are the biggest challenges according to you?

Working with farmers’ organisations continues to be an important challenge. Too many organisations still work in an ‘ad hoc’ way, lacking planning or strategy. These organisations must start working in a better organized and coordinated way. That is a role we cannot take over; it really has to be done within the organisations themselves. In practice you see that this is often very slowly, for highly different reasons. Sometimes there are different interests, sometimes disagreements about funding... Apart from that, unfortunately there is also the role played by some donor organisations who direct very much from their donor role, which does not favour the development of strong farmers’ organisations.

What do you see as opportunities for the future?

I think we focus too much on farmers’ organisations as such. In my opinion, the opportunities lie rather in cooperating with different organisations, companies, governments. In other words: the multi-stakeholder approach. I think this is a track we have to explore further. As far as I am concerned, that is also our strength: searching for links and win-win situations, bringing together people from related sectors, setting up experiments and documenting them. For me personally, precisely that is what appeals to me in Vredeseilanden/VECO. Taking time to experiment and discover, not intervening by ourselves but rather facilitating, creating conditions. This way of working fascinates me enormously, and I am also convinced of its effectiveness.

But above all I see gigantic opportunities in supporting farmers’ organisations in dealing with ‘markets’ in general. There are countless farmers’ organisations that have never actually thought about market opportunities. There really is an untouched potential there. In our East African region we talk about millions of possible customers. That is huge. Export is only a very small percentage; the main potential is in local and regional markets. In our example projects, we have successfully demonstrated which opportunities there are in terms of market access, also for small-scale, organized farmers. If you would succeed in expanding those experiences and improving market systems widely, rethinking them, organizing them differently...then this can reach very far.

Interview by Jo Vermeersch.