Post Tagged with: "farmer"

First Chocolate from Uganda

July 22, 2018

While we’re on the subject of cocoa (see my previous post) I had an opportunity recently to photograph the work of Uganda’s first and only chocolate producer, Pink Foods Industries. While farmers have been cultivating cocoa in this East African nation for decades, Pink Foods is the first Ugandan company to process the beans into a  finished consumer product. My client, Shared Interest, is financing the expansion of the company into a bigger processing center. As a fair trade ethical investment firm, Shared Interest was certainly more concerned with seeing the people behind the product, rather than the product itself. Once these pods are harvested, they’re split open to reveal a white, sweet, fleshy fruit, delicious to the taste, enveloping the cocoa beans. Many farmers make a habit of savoring this fruit as they work. Once this sweet flesh is removed, the beans are spread out in the sun, fermented, roasted,[…]

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From Beans to Bank – Mt. Elgon, Uganda

December 26, 2016

Who knew that growing quality coffee was such a difficult task? In fact, cultivating a quality coffee plot can take an entire generation to perfect. So how do small farmers with limited capital and capacity ever compete in such a market? Are they doomed to sell poor-quality beans (ones that will eventually be used for low-grade instant coffee) for next to nothing, or can  they polish their growing practices enough to make a pretty penny selling to the likes of Illy and Starbucks? Lutheran World Relief’s intervention throughout the coffee growing world strengthens small, local coffee cooperatives in a number of ways, to include providing access to finance and processing equipment. In the above video, however, it’s the intervention of the Community Knowledge Worker that is highlighted. These CKWs, who are trained by LWR, move from farm to farm and work up close with small farmers themselves, advising them and[…]

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With All of My Passion

January 29, 2015

Passion fruit, that is.  Mabel is breaking Uganda’s gender barriers as a small business owner and passion fruit farmer.

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growing up with One Acre Fund

August 16, 2010

I’ve recently been impressed with the work of the agricultural NGO One Acre Fund. While on assignment in Kenya for business magazine “FIVE,” I documented the organization’s work with small farmers. These farmers usually cultivate no more than approximately one acre of land and therefore are usually the most in need. While OAF works in both Kenya and Rwanda, these photographs are from western Kenya’s Webuye district. Why is One Acre Fund featured in a business magazine? Its model differs from that of most non-profit organizations. Instead of handing out improved fertilizers and seeds, farmers are given loans for these things and organize in groups under the supervision of a extension worker to learn how to use them. The groups then bring their harvests together at the end of the season when One Acre Fund acts as a bulk selling agent, thus commanding higher prices for the farmers. In 2009,[…]

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