Participatory Market Chain Approach (PMCA) is a methodology that fills existing gaps and takes advantage of existing marketing opportunities. It is a novel Research & Development methodology that is aimed at stimulating pro-poor market chain innovation. It involves all interested stakeholders in the process and decisions are made together. It combines old and new ideas, theory and practice in Research & Development processes. PMCA engages people towards development. PMCA is about linking farmers to people who understand the rules of the market so that they can extend agricultural marketing skills to the farmers besides the agricultural information that they have. PMCA is process based and not project based. It has three phases i.e. phase 1 involves understanding market chain actors (their interests, activities, ideas, problems), phase 2 analyses joint market opportunities and phase 3 has the practical innovations. A minimum of 9 months is required to realize benefits and generating innovations i.e. technology, institution etc are to competing favorably in market chains (linking different actors from producers to consumers). Through PMCA stakeholder platforms are generated to enable different actors to share ideas and build strategies or alliances.
In Uganda the Maize sub sector was selected during phase 1 by the PMCA core team. The team carried out phase 1 activities which allowed members to become familiar with the Maize market chain and its actors. These activities helped to identify potential innovations based on the shared interests of stakeholders involved. These opportunities were suggested at the end of Phase I during the final event and they would be analyzed in more detail in phase 2.
The PMCA methodology will help small scale farmers in the Maize sector to have collaboration with Market chain actors. This would help them in case they need any market information to produce the type and amount of Maize that is on demand in the market. This would improve on their livelihood because production and income would be on the increase.
Farmer entrepreneurship
In Uganda, the agriculture sector is dominated by smallholder farmers, who contribute 95% of agricultural production. The majority of these smallholder farmers are women with limited capital and access to but not control over land. More so, the largest group of households classified as being poor has consistently been those engaged in agriculture, with the recent increase in poverty being particularly recorded among those engaged in crop husbandry. This is mainly attributed to low profitability from agricultural enterprises arising from low input use, poor access and adoption of new technologies, inadequate marketing capacity, limited access to affordable finance, sub-optimal organization framework for farmers, inadequate infrastructure, rainfall dependency and non competitive market prices, among others.
In order to improve the livelihoods of these small-scale farmers, PELUM Uganda embarked on efforts to enhance farmer entrepreneurship. Activities undertaken include; capacity building workshops for member organizations in Marketing and Finance management with specific focus on principles of marketing, enterprise selection & management, business and marketing plans development, Functional aspects of input and output markets, value chain development, invest analysis, record keeping and business management. Workshops are always followed up with exchange visits to organizations with good case studies on a particular topic. Through the visits, members get an opportunity to share practical experiences and new ideas.
In 2010, the focus was Marketing Management and 23 members participated in the exchange visits to National Organic Agricultural Movement in Uganda (NOGAMU), Africa 2000 Network Uganda, Organization for Rural development (ORUDE) and Rural Community in Development (RUCID). In 2011, the focus was Finance Management and members gained from the visits to a Send a Cow Uganda women’s project in Namayumba, Africa 2000 Network Uganda projects in Kamuli district, and Agrinet Limited.
Sharing events are another means of promoting farmer entrepreneurship. The events attract different stakeholders including the private sector, researchers, universities, NGOs and the government to share ideas on how to improve the livelihoods of the small-scale farmer. In 2010 for instance, PELUM Uganda in partnered with Agri ProFocus (APF) network organized a sharing event that focused on 3 strategies namely; Group Approach, Market Linkages and Savings and Credit access. Guided by the theme, Making Entrepreneurship a reality for small-holder farmers, participants looked at how the strategies were used by PELUM members to advance entrepreneurship among farmers and ways in which they could be further developed. The strategies were documented into a book titled, “Approaches for achieving farmer entrepreneurship in Uganda: Case studies of PELUM Uganda Member Organizations”.
PELUM Uganda also partnered with Farmgain Africa- a market information service provider, and started market information dissemination radio programs on 5 radio stations spread across the country.
The programs started in October 2010 and are aired on MEGA FM (Northern region), Voice of Teso (Eastern region), Greater African radio (Western region), Suubi FM (Central region) and Arua One (West Nile region). The aim of the programs is to provide timely market information to the small-scale farmers necessary during bargaining. Prior to the start of the programs, PELUM Uganda and Farmgain Africa organized a training workshop for journalists from the 5 radio stations and 5 selected Member organizations (AFIRD, EA, CIDI, KULIKA and VEDCO). Participants were taught how to collect, package, analyze, produce and distribute market information. The presence and role of the member organizations is basically monitoring of the radio programs, maintaining relationships with the presenters and acting as sources of information.
