I am a proponent of eating organic foods, and so I love to make a contribution to the sector. I was fortunate to undertake a study on the governance of value chains of organic pineapples in Uganda. In this study, I interacted with organic pineapple farmers, exporters and some NGOs that work with the farmers.

The motivation for doing the study were; one, the organic market was and is still growing globally; two, the sector in Uganda is young and it lacked vital information to guide the actors and the would be investors; three, the way the actors were coordinated or how their transactions were governed needed to be studied, to better guide the interested actors.

I found that half of the organic pineapples, which were produced by farmers were sold to organic consumers and the rest to conventional consumers. The less sale to the organic consumers was because of the small organic consumer base in Uganda, and the inability of export companies to buy all the organic pineapples produced. Farmers involved in organic pineapple farming got higher incomes because of the premium they received. They appreciated other values got through organic farming, such as eating healthy food from their farms, maintaining healthy soils, access to trainings etc.

Exporters choose different ways in which they interacted with the farmers, and whichever method, exporters were aiming at reducing transaction costs on their side. Generally, exporters had more control over the transactions. I also found out that there were strong contracts between the farmers and exporters, but what stood out in the study was that trust building was important to maintain these contracts and exchange.

Involvement in the organic pineapple farming is a quick way for smallholder farmers to engage in export trade, gain meaningful income, whilst conserving biodiversity and benefiting from consumption of healthy organic food from their farms.  The study benefits the investors who would wish to get involved in the organic pineapple export trade because it has details of all the direct costs and transaction costs along the chain, and proposes ways the chain can be upgraded. The organic sector however still suffers from the antagonistic policies that favor conventional farming at the expense of the growth of the organic sector. Also, there are very few exporters with limited capacity to buy from all the farmers. There is therefore need to make a national wide promotion of organic pineapple farming to boost this sector.