As a business (www.oriplerfoods.com), we took a bold decision to move out of avocado and pineapples. We shall revisit those products at some point in future. But you must be alert to certain constraints.
You see everyone says; ‘Uganda’s avocado is yummy or our pineapple is the sweetest’, but that’s when it’s still in Uganda. By the time most of Uganda’s crops get to their destination, they have lost the competitiveness factor.
You harvest avocados from Fort Portal, by the time you’re in Kampala, they have started ripening. Without a proper cold chain, you are going to be dealing in losses. By the time the same avocados arrive in Dubai, half of the consignment will be ripe. Now compare that to a Mexican avocado, it’s harvested right. It never hits the ground. From there, it goes straight into a cold chain and that’s maintained all the way it lands in Dubai. By the time a mexican avocado lands, it’s just as good as it was harvested. A cold chain is as good as its warmest link. That lag from farm to packhouse is enough to trigger that fast ripening.
And I tell my business partner, that we are lucky we’ve learned these things while we’re still young, and can still pivot. But imagine you retire at 55 or 60 years then someone confuses you into growing Hass avocado or going into fresh food export. It will wipe out all your money.
We got to a point where all our money was wiped out. Sometimes because your avocado arrived ripe so the buyer has to discount some of these losses. Of course we would also discount bad avocados from the farmers. So if the exporters are out, the farmer is also out. The sector never grows.
Again, we’ve been lucky that somewhere along the way, other partners came on board and then poured in new capital that enables you to pivot. Imagine we’d taken financing in form of a loan. I keep saying, the air freight cost is 45-50% of the cost of export. If you try sea freight, you must have the capacity to maintain that cold chain and also build up let’s say 20 tonnes of avocado. If I asked you to gather 20 tonnes of avocado in Uganda today, you would run mad. By the time you’re done gathering 20 tonnes, the initial ones you gathered would be ripening.
I have also noticed that there is a lot of theory in Uganda’s agricultural sector. There are few practitioners. Most people are middle men. The guy who sells chemicals has never applied those same chemicals to some crops. You will find farmers using fertilizers and pesticides that were banned.
So you will go argue our pineapples are too sweet. But that sweetness can’t arrive in the destination market. And I say, the intervention in this sector must be in the backward chain. There will always be market for a good product. The problem with Uganda is that you just can’t yet guarantee a good product.
Of course there are many other issues. But most exporters in Uganda end up doing businesses of renting out packhouses, selling training, selling customers. Few exporters are really exporting. And of the few exporting, there are a few serious indigenous Ugandans.
Today when I met my business partner, I told him, this pivoting must lead us somewhere. It must now work. Because we’ve risked so many lives on this journey. Many stakeholders have put in their all to see this work. The farmers, the association bodies, our employees, the shareholders. Right now, I can say we have a better hang of what we are doing. We can map out a clear answer to most constraints that have taken other exporters out of business.
If you are planning to enter food export, be sure that the backchain will whip you terribly. You must invest your effort there. Your products are good as the backchain. The biggest puzzle is sourcing the right quantity of any product at the right quality at the right time.
So if you asked me that major challenge in our value chains? They are just not integrated. The farmer fights a lonely battle. The exporter fights a lonely battle. The buyer fights their own battle. Associations such as Hortifresh are trying to do the integration, but Government must be bold and fund them. Your agro-chain must be able to speak one voice. Right from farm inputs all the way to final market.