There are a number of markets where we can sell orange-fleshed sweet potato. The first market is our neighbors – they to come to our farms and we harvest small amounts of OFSP and sell to them.
The second market we have is the local market. Anytime that we need a small amount of money, we harvest just one or two baskets of sweetpotato from the farm and we take them to the local market to sell.
The third market we have is selling roots to the Nyirangarama bakery here in Rwanda that makes Akarabo orange-fleshed sweet potato biscuits and other products.
We supply OFSP roots to the factory every Monday and Thursday. This means that we have a regular demand. We are selling each kilogram at about 150 Rwanda Francs, and since we sell to the factory twice a week, we have regular income, which is great.
Another source of income for us is the orange-fleshed sweet potato vines. Many organisations like CARITAS come to us to buy vines because they have beneficiaries who are suffering from malnutrition. They know that orange-fleshed sweet potato is a weapon to fight malnutrition. We sell 1kg of vines for 300 Rwanda Francs – double what we get from roots.
Scaling up Sweetpotato through Agriculture and Nutrition (SUSTAIN) is a five-year partnership (2013-2018) coordinated by the International Potato Center (CIP) and financed by the UK Department for International Development to spread the nutrition benefits of biofortified OFSP to more farmers.
The program aims to reach 1.2 million households with children under 5 years across four countries: Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and Rwanda through mutually-reinforcing incentives to increase adoption of OFSP, consumption of Vitamin-A-rich foods, and diversification of OFSP utilization.