Kuna siku niliuliza hii swali in another thread here:
Farmers want high returns for their produce (milk, vegetables, tomatoes, maize, potatoes etc)… Like the rest of us, the farmers need to educate their kids, wish to drive a Toyota Hilux, and hopefully, install an FTA satellite dish… and also save enough for a sunny day.
Middlemen traders who buy from farmers in bulk want farmers to levy lower prices but they want the end consumers to pay high prices for the commodities ( so that they maximize profits)… and in the process, live a comfortable life and invest in Treasury Bonds or build a flat in Roysambu, and also save enough for a sunny day.
Consumers on the other end are crying that the prices of foodstuffs have gone through the roof and want the prices lowered… They claim they cannot continue buying Unga at 75 a kg or 2kg of Sugar at over 300… They also need to pay rent for that single room, bedsitter, or 1 bedroom flat… Pay school fees so their kids get a decent education… And also, save enough for a rainy day.
Lower the production price.
Example am a dairy farmer and want a good return so if i spend 10 to produce 1 ltr of milk then i can sell at 20 and make a profit of 10 which is 100% profits. But now a days dairy meal is costing 3k what do you expect?
In Tanzania, foodstuffs are very cheap. Way cheaper than you can imagine. The equivalent of Ksh50 can buy you over 2kg of any type of green vegetables. Potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, onions… anything! When you go to Arusha market, one conspicuous thing you notice is the absence of big lorries and bulk traders in the market! Only the lowly but honest akina mama mboga, selling fresh and ripe farm products!
Get rid of the middlemen and cartels. Farmers should sell their crops directly to customers. Where I stay we have farmers’ markets where you can get fresh, quality foodstuffs at fair prices…
Do away with the middleman. The farmer sells directly to the processors or consumers at his best price. Then the government will have to entirely stop the importation of such produce. This helps the farmers. But the major problem is small scale farming.
where i am 1litre of milk goes for 27 ksh, na hiyo ni ile inatolewa ukiona from a cow, Fuck jubilee & Nasa, have no idea whatsoever how to fix the cost of living, very soon Nairobi will be like Luanda bila oil money, utasikia bure excuses, ooh sijui drought, sijui tax, mara oil prices, mara cartel, ama we can blame Raila pia, ama ruto, absolute nonsense
eradicating Middle traders is a nightmare because, unless you are a large scale farmer with means… you can’t get your produce to major markets in large towns and far flung areas, that’s where Middlemen traders come in. We need them to supply the produce to as many people as possible in different places.
so if farmers are selling milk at 27 a litre, sisi end consumers tunanunua from supermarket at 70-80 for half a litre, meaning a litre of processed milk will cost around 150 KES.
That is an additional 120kes a litre since the milk left the farm. Who knows the transportation, processing and distribution cost of a litre of milk?
You cannot possibly do away with middlemen they provide a very essential link between the farmer and the consumer. What we need is to strengthen farmers so that they can like form groups and/or cooperatives that way they can buy inputs in bulk as a group hence cheaply and also be able to negotiate for better selling prices as they will sell as a group and so hence become price setters rather than price takers as they are now.
meaning that if a farmer sells the milk at 27, anaenda hasara kubwa sana. The only option is to sell at 40, to eke out something. Consumers nao hawataki kusikia hiyo.
You have hit the nail on the head -cartels. Do you know if you are a potato farmer in Lari you just can’t load your lorry with your produce and sell it at Marikiti? YOU HAVE TO GO THROUGH BROKERS!
The biggest problem we have in Kenya is that before that tomato reaches your mouth, kuna watu kama kumi ‘wameikula’, from brokers, to transporters to the local county gavament.