The role of vegetable exports in rural livelihood improvement

Although high-value horticultural exports have are known to provide opportunity for linking rural smallholder farmers to global markets, the factors influencing farming success and decision making by the farmers in the hot pepper sub-sector in Uganda from which one could better understand the value chain costs, margins and institutional arrangements that enable drawing of meaningful recommendations for policy and sub-sector development are poorly understood. Drawing from field survey data of hot pepper value chain actors including hot pepper farmers, traders and exporters in Uganda, this book provides in-depth value chain and economic analyses of Uganda’s export hot pepper sub-sector and consequently presents discussions, strategic interventions and policy recommendations. This book recommends the establishment of a hot pepper commodity chain development initiative to guide and support public and private sector investments in rural production and marketing infrastructure, innovative input and extension delivery systems, development of product and market development, production and marketing agreement enforcement and information exchange thereby enhancing Uganda’s hot pepper export competitiveness.