#MEET NAMPYA FARMERS' MARKET

#MEET NAMPYA FARMERS' MARKET

This is a short interview we conducted with Matovu Sula, the founder of “NAMPYA FARMERS' MARKET”. If you like the concept of this idea and would like to vote for it, click HERE.

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• What is your background?

My name is Matovu Sula and am the founder and CEO of NAMPYA FARMERS' MARKET - a social enterprise that works to upgrade the linkage of small holder farmers to the high income consumers (formal sector). 33 years old, a Ugandan by nationality, a trainee of agribusiness management and an Information Technology Engineer, I founded up NAMPYA FARMERS MARKET to restore hope in small holder farmers and specifically to attract the youth into agriculture and agribusiness. Working with a PRiSM(Prosperity Realized through Small holder Markets) model, NAMPYA FARMERS MARKET runs a pooled Farm-to- Business delivery system that is driven by the needs of farmers and buyers. In this business, our innovation falls under the use of Field Farmer Schools to guide quality and quantity of farm output. For our innovation, I can only discuss it as the new golden age of agronomy to be attested to as the only production package potent of increasing Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) harvests and therefore incomes for small farmers. This is because it presents enormous benefits to rural economies and it is the acumen needed to develop production practices that promise concentrated farming and defragmented business plans to optimize supply chains that deliver business and social value. However, good and mobile storage is paramount for the success of this project. A proper stationary Distribution Logistics Infrastructure and mobile storage can offer FARMERS more improved temporal and significantly more spatial arbitrage. By the condensation (caused by day and night temperatures ) that lets aflatoxin producing fungi and insects flourish, I strongly believe that mobile storage is a brigde between farms and transport to demand centers that debunks myths like "metal storage is expensive". Mobile utilities work by scaling where and when effective storage is needed. Mobile utilities award the "rights to park cost-effectively so trucks can go to haul heavy loads and leave a stationary Grain Distribution Logistics Infrastructure (GDLI) behind to enhance grower operations when and where they need to scale production of safe and surplus food grain. BENEFITS: For tenure-insecure agriculture, mobility is step one to " Rights that creates incentives for technology adoption" when and where growers need utility GDLI to bridge gaps to a peace-of-mind. For AID discussing mobile GDLI as a qualitative bridge between farms and transport to demand centers will debunk myths like "metal storage is expensive", storage structures preferably built from locally available materials are urgently needed. Development experts discuss how the "new 'golden age' of agronomy" (pearse, 2016) and production packages will increase Sub Saharan Africa cereals, legume, grain harvests, however, the experts are yet to see post-harvest as an integral part of the whole system or how stopping "Post-harvest and related input loss (PHL)" increases food availability without further user of land, water and other agricultural inputs. Production packages that merely increase grain harvest lack meaning because inputs like "SMS based information, micro-finance, mechanization, seed, fertilizer, pest management" are wasted when improper drying and storage allows rats, birds, insects and fungi to cause "significant post-harvest loss". So just like hand washing with soap will prevent Ebola, GDLI should stop aflatoxin and allow FARMERS to market their surplus for a peace-of-mind like paying for health care, school fees, retirement and ultimately support National Food Security or exports. Mobile utility is appropriate because it supports " scientific and cost-effective pest monitoring procedures that permit judicious adjustments to the timing, choice, and intensity of control actions; timely chemical pest control measures, in grain storage, are often not only the cheapest but also the most reliably efficacious of all possible options. Even before "Internal Regulatory enforcement creates demand for grading", mobile utility GDLI will scale to deliver safe surplus food to Markets. The World Bank estimates that " Every 1 percent reduction in post-harvest loss leads to $40 million in output gains, with farmers as the key beneficiaries "(Mendoza 2016). Most PHL estimates suggest it is appropriate to for example invest half (value of PHL plus the value of missed marketing) in mobile utility GDLI so the other half net benefit continues long after AID support ends. Therefore, with reduced post-harvest loss, only myths stand between farmers optimizing the GDLI so production packages are significantly more meaningful.

• Describe your idea or project in two sentences.

Reversing post-harvest loss has an agricultural impact and enterprising strategy to ensure the rural job of producing food for business plans that defragments aggregation, storage, processing and marketing services.

• What are the benefits you take from the Entrepreneurship Campus?

Knowledge and skills development, networking.

• What motivates you to be an entrepreneur?

I yearn to be a serious entrepreneur because entrepreneurs are job creators. And by creating jobs, entrepreneurs lead to sustainable economic growth and employment creation. With NAMPYA FARMERS MARKET, I really yearn to vehemently contribute to a more vibrant and job creating agricultural economy of Uganda.

• Imagine you have ‚supreme power’ to create and innovate: how would your world look like? What changes would you like to make in your community and/or in the world? Share your thoughts from a ‚supreme power’ and entrepreneur standpoint.

From my current lay man's point of view, I understand that one of the greatest sources of illness is an empty wallet, and if you want to reduce on the number of people suffering, you only have to give them a chance to earn an honest living. So, given the fact that agriculture employs the biggest population in Uganda (often above 75%), contributing to income and foreign exchange and farmers are poorest of the poor, if I had supreme power, I would strongly invest in the agricultural sector. I would strongly support innovative agribusiness and ideas to achieve supremacy of agriculture as an occupation.

• What would you say to potential voters who may be reading your interview?

I salute them all in the name of peace and the Youth Citizen Entrepreneurship Competition, and I humbly urge them to keep all their hopes alive. For my idea, it works for a philosophy that the only way we are going to solve Africa's problem of unemployment, rural urban migrations, poverty, and wait-hood among the youth is by working around the resources we have in abundance - the soils. So in building a solution around the soils, am exceedingly humble to urge them to support my idea.

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• NOTICE: If you want to see more submitted ideas and projects at the Youth Citizen Entrepreneurship Competition, visit BEST IDEAS and BEST PROJECTS and VOTE for the ones you think deserve to WIN the Competition!