Can pumpkins be the start of a vegetable revolution in Uganda?

Vegetable production is a key part of nutrition security, but it is increasingly being recognized as a way to provide a much-needed income boost for smallholder farmers too. Especially as they see margins being squeezed by rising fertilizer prices and the impact of climate change. “In general, governments and development agencies don't focus on vegetables,” Stuart Morris, the director of East-West Seed Knowledge Transfer Foundation, told Devex. “You can actually earn a lot more money from vegetables than you can from field crops, and the impact on nutrition goes much deeper.” In order to reap the economic benefits of vegetables, however, research shows governments will have to increase investments in farm productivity — including working on improved varieties, alternatives to chemical pesticides, and improving market access. Currently, the worldwide consumption of fruits and vegetables is well below the minimum levels recommended by the World Health Organization, especially in low- and middle-income countries, because of their cost. “High prices of vegetables have a lot to do with the low level of productivity of the farmers, that's the number one issue. Make the farmers more productive so that one hectare of vegetable farming just delivers a lot more vegetables,” Simon N. Groot, the founder of East-West Seed, told Devex. In 2019, Groot was awarded the World Food Prize for his “transformative role in empowering millions of smallholder farmers in more than 60 countries to earn greater incomes through enhanced vegetable production.” That included projects in the Philippines and Uganda where Groot’s company introduced hybrid seeds — two different varieties of the same plant are crossed to improve them. He dedicated the majority of the prize money to improving pumpkin farming in Uganda, encouraging sustainable farming practices and using hybrid seeds with better disease resistance, taste, and shelf life, in the process. Devex spoke to Groot and Morris — who oversees the pumpkin program — about why it’s important to get more farmers to grow pumpkins and their incomes. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Why did you decide to bet on scaling pumpkin production in Uganda? Stuart Morris: Pumpkin is really an underrated crop, at least on the farmer's side. There's quite a big market demand already; Uganda is considered to be a hub of pumpkin production because people eat a lot of pumpkins and they use absolutely everything in the pumpkin plant — the fruit, the skin, the leaves, the stems, as well as the flesh. The whole plant is consumed either as food or for making different types of medicine. So there's a big demand for pumpkins, but the production is really held back [because] farmers are lacking the knowledge and access to seeds. They also don't recognize the market opportunities — market demand in Uganda is quite high itself, but then there’s neighboring countries, particularly Kenya, where we see traders coming and sourcing pumpkins for their own markets. If we can build up the supply of pumpkins, it's a fantastic opportunity for income development for smallholder farmers. How could pumpkin production be improved? Morris: In most countries, you can't really say pumpkin is farmed, it's more like farmers will throw seeds into the corner of their field. [A farmer] may have three or four plants in the corner of a field where [they] don't maintain the crop, and you don't make much money like that. But if farmers start to use more systematic ways of production, you can actually get really high yields and significant income for not too much work and very low investment cost. Compared to other vegetable crops like tomato, pepper, or eggplants, it's low investment and very easy. It's a safe bet. And that becomes interesting, particularly for women, who have generally smaller plots of land to grow on, and generally less cash to invest into their production. How is East-West Seed training farmers to use more sustainable farming techniques for pumpkin growing, and how does this help improve their incomes? Simon N. Groot: While we were working on hybrid [seed] development, we discovered that farmers were extremely reluctant to spend their own money on purchasing hybrid seeds, because they had their own seeds, which were free of charge, so why would they? We came up with a modest attempt to teach the farmers about how to handle those seeds better, to not waste any seeds, and make sure that every seed makes good plants. And that was the beginning of what we now call “knowledge transfer.” And it was a tool needed to make the concept of hybrid seeds palatable to small farmers. They would all benefit from it if they found out what improvements to their income the hybrid seeds could make. These are all long learning processes and it took us quite a while to reach the level of knowledge transfer that we are applying in Africa now. Morris: We have extension teams in each country we work in. In Uganda, we've got a team of local extension staff that we train and support. We then go into locations and identify areas which we think have got potential — which is determined by the farmers and the potential markets for pumpkins. Once we've identified the areas, then we start selecting key farmers in that village. They don’t need to be the best or richest farmer in the village. It's the farmers that we think will be best at sharing knowledge. And then we support those key farmers to have a demonstration showcasing sustainable practices for growing the pumpkin and will support them for at least two crop cycles. So usually the support lasts for about 12 months. In many low-income countries, individuals often can’t afford to eat enough vegetables for a healthy diet. What’s needed to create sustainable markets for a product like pumpkins? Groot: Market development is people development, and that takes a lot of money at a time when you're not selling much because the market is tiny. You only start making money when the market is big. Now comes the next step, to reach out to these large numbers of small farmers. It’s a huge effort and it’s quite slow. That's where knowledge transfer comes in to accelerate that process by showing more farmers that better farming makes more money for them. If you stick to these traditional yield levels of tomatoes, pumpkins, or some of the native crops, they are ridiculously low. In Nigeria, onion yields — which is a huge crop worth a million hectares — are very low. Give them the tools and the knowledge to become better farmers. Better farming means better yields, which means more supply, which means lower prices for vegetables. Morris: The other beauty of pumpkin is that if the market price is low, you don't need to sell it. Unless you need the cash quickly, it's a crop that you can store in your house for a number of months — it doesn't go rotten. If you have tomatoes you have to get them out within a week. It also doesn’t rely on a cold chain making it the perfect vegetable for transportation and storage. Visit Food Secured — a series that explores how to save the food system and where experts share groundbreaking solutions for a sustainable and resilient future. This is an editorially independent piece produced as part of our Food Secured series, which is funded by partners. To learn more about this series and our partners, click here.