KOTEMU Cooperative: Sweet economics

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KOTEMU sells vines and root to local NGOs working in nutrition as well as supplying roots to a local private sector processor

who creates commercial products made out of OFSP Credit: S. Quinn. Original story.

There have been economic benefits from growing orange-fleshed sweet potato. We sell the roots at 150 Rwandan Francs per kg. We have a contract with a nearby processor that provides a regular demand for the orange-fleshed sweet potato roots. We feel much more secure now that we have this regular income.

We have knowledge of orange-fleshed sweet potato farming from the training that we received. We now know how to take care of the crop, we know how to process them and turn it into mandazi and other processed goods. This adds value to the crop and means that we can get more money.

We also make money from harvesting and selling the vines. We are selling 1kg of orange-fleshed sweet potato vines at 300 Rwandan Francs. We sell the vines to different development organizations in the area who provide the vines to other farmers to grow. This is another good source of income.

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.

 

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