Mukono Farmers Blame Poverty on Low Vanilla Prices

from All Africa

New Vision (Kampala)

By Henry Wasswa
Kampala

GRIEF-STRICKEN, Hannington Luzze spent the weekend in the blazing sun, clearing his one-acre garden of vanilla and the bushes.

Like hundreds of peasants in the village of Mairikiti in Mukono, 33 miles south-east of Kampala, Luzze plans to replace the vanilla plants with other crops like potatoes and cassava.

"Everyone in this village has lost the initial great love for vanilla. The prices which were high are now too low that it is like donating the vanilla beans to the middlemen," the 42-year old said in an interview.

Vanilla prices suddenly shot up in 2003 with the price of a kilogramme at sh100,000 from sh35,000. The long-suffering peasants became rich over night.

Luzze who had never bought a bicycle bought a second-hand Carina vehicle and renovated his house.

People cut down their coffee trees and replaced them with vanilla. However, the prices suddenly went down and now, a kilogramme of vanilla costs between sh1,500 and sh2,000. The peasants are now reeling with poverty.

"I sold vanilla at between sh80,000 and sh100,000 a kilogramme and I bought whatever I wanted including a car. We started getting low prices from 2004.

When the prices fell, I was left with a huge debt burden. I had borrowed money to finish my projects. All these were unfinished on top of being hunted day and night to service the debt," Luzze said.

"I am now doing shoddy work like digging in other people's gardens and making bricks. I cannot even have sh20,000 in my pocket. You can imagine that at one time, there was a season when there was no single buyer for vanilla," he said.

The boom, however, lasted for a short time, leaving Ugandan peasants like Matia Ndabwalukanyi crying.

"I was a known coffee and cocoa framer but I cut all those crops and planted vanilla because the vanilla prices were very, very high. The money I got helped me pay tuition for my offspring. All that is gone and I do not even have the morale to weed the vanilla plants," Ndabwalukanyi (75), a retired teacher, said.

The U.S. is the largest importer of vanilla.