Cucumbergate

Today I had to buy food at the Eco-Farm store as almost every Thursday. Claudia informed me about some guys that had been given seeds by John, our vet, and would now bring some cucumbers. She had already agreed with a motel in a city nearby to bring 20 pieces of cucumber. In the morning Claudia went to town with Charles for some reason and when she returned informed me that there were already sacks filled with cucumber standing in front of the store. A full sack, depending on its content, weighs between 70 up to 120 kg, far more than 20 pieces of cucumber. I knew that this was going to mean trouble… When I set off with Charles I joked that these guys would speer us if we refuse to buying their cucumbers… In front of the store there were already two sacks of cucumbers, not full but, uhm, I would assume 60-70 kg each. Trouble was in the air…

We opened the store, cleaned a bit and prepared for buying what Claudia had told us. The first guys to come were the farmers who grew cucumber. I immediately told them that we need only 20 big cucumbers as they were told. They then started to complain and moan about us not buying that stuff. Cucumber is not really a local food that they can sell at the local market. The locals actually don’t even know it. What to do? We could only buy those 20 and there were two farmers who had spent a couple of months growing these cucumbers. And as they were told to spray it, they did and thus even had extra expenses… They told me they had each a quarter, respectively two quarters (quarter of an acre) of cucumbers. The harvest of half an acre might probably result in 7 sacks of cucumbers, at least half a ton, which means that it was going to be impossible for us to buy all their harvest and there’s no local market to sell it; they might try selling it in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, but only the transport of the cucumbers would cost a fortune. I was so sorry for them and actually got also a bit angry with John and Claudia. There was no way, I couldn’t buy more than that. So one farmer just left all the cucumbers at the store. He didn’t want to carry them back, knowing he would not be able to sell them anyway. The other was so frustrated that she said she would go home and harvest all the cucumbers to throw them away to - at least – be able to plant other vegetables on the field. In the end they both left, without their cucumbers. Oh dear, what to do with this poor guys and what to do with all the cucumbers? We just didn’t have enough customers to sell them and couldn’t eat them ourselves. I then decided to give them to some local people so they would not just rot in our store.

I was annoyed when I got back home and told to Claudia what had happened. I also told her that this seeding program was badly thought-out. Giving seeds to farmers to make them grow other kinds of vegetables that they would be able to sell for a lot better price than they would get for the local stuff that, firstly, everybody grows and, secondly, usually is on the market in sufficient quantities, if not in overcapacity, sounds pretty good at first. But there’s no market for cucumbers around here as the locals cannot afford to buying expensive things that don’t even satisfy their hunger and the farmers have no idea how to develop a market for these products, so they expected us to buy all their harvest. Of course, they were told that we would not buy all their harvest, but as far as I am concerned, it was predictable to be ending up in trouble. Anyways, this problem needs to be solved.

This was the last time I purchased at the Eco-Farm store, for sure.