Demand-driven and Cost Effective Production: What the Farmers Ought to know. A case of Local Chicken Enterprise in Masindi District-Uganda

Most African communities depend on agriculture for both income generation and food security and yet farming has faced and is still confronted with a lot of production and market related hardships. Despite all these constraints, farmers are stuck on agriculture as it’s the only definite way of earning a living. The mistake farmers and other agricultural practitioners continuously make is to produce first and look for the market later. This is where buyers and the middle men in particular exploit and a conclusion is eventually made by the producer that,” there is no money in agriculture.” Farmers including those who want to reap from agriculture need to first change their attitudes towards it and secondly produce what the markets are demanding at particular point in time. This therefore calls for institutionally guided farmer market research, enterprise selection, experimentation and enterprise development. Farmers can only benefit from agricultural production after carefully understanding what the buyer wants as in the type of the commodity, size, quantity, quality, frequency of supply, conditions of supply and the price the buyer is willing to offer among others. Where the selected enterprise has very high costs of production, the farmer should minimize costs buy substituting some inputs with local materials and also negotiate for a premium price and sign contracts with the buyers. Two farmer research groups in Masindi district in Uganda went through the above processes and have got success stories to tell.