Moses explaining the project
The SACCO is currently developing a pilot program for agricultural loans. The loans give farmers—here, everyone is a farmer—money to buy fertilizer for matoke crops. Matoke, the staple food in Uganda, looks like a banana but is starchier. Though most people grow it primarily for personal consumption, there’s a large outside market for the crop that could make any surpluses quite profitable. Fertilizer that is specifically targeted to each farmer’s soil quality could improve the yield of a given matoke plant several times over. Before offering the loans as a product, however, the SACCO wants to run a pilot assessing local yield increases and profit increases, as well as expected default rates, to best structure its interest rates and loan repayment timetables.
Rather than laboriously counting the actual matoke at each harvest, the SACCO has an ingenious method of very accurately predicting plant yield. If a plant’s stem is measured during flowering, there is a direct relationship between the girth of the stem and the number of matoke it will produce. Part of the pilot program, then, is recruiting volunteers to measure matoke girth on the pilot participants’ farms over the course of the next year. The measurements will then allow the SACCO to predict how much additional matoke each investment of fertilizer creates, and then use market prices to estimate how much additional profit a farmer could make with a fertilizer loan of a certain amount.
The SACCO held a meeting this week with potential volunteer recruits. About 9 people showed up, more than the SACCO needs, although of course we also expect some attrition. Everyone was really enthusiastic, though it’s unclear that they understand what their duties will be yet. It was a promising start to a program that’s a new venture for the SACCO, in high demand locally, and has a lot of potential to benefit both the farmers and the bank.
Rather than laboriously counting the actual matoke at each harvest, the SACCO has an ingenious method of very accurately predicting plant yield. If a plant’s stem is measured during flowering, there is a direct relationship between the girth of the stem and the number of matoke it will produce. Part of the pilot program, then, is recruiting volunteers to measure matoke girth on the pilot participants’ farms over the course of the next year. The measurements will then allow the SACCO to predict how much additional matoke each investment of fertilizer creates, and then use market prices to estimate how much additional profit a farmer could make with a fertilizer loan of a certain amount.
The SACCO held a meeting this week with potential volunteer recruits. About 9 people showed up, more than the SACCO needs, although of course we also expect some attrition. Everyone was really enthusiastic, though it’s unclear that they understand what their duties will be yet. It was a promising start to a program that’s a new venture for the SACCO, in high demand locally, and has a lot of potential to benefit both the farmers and the bank.
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