Lira cooperative promoting production of oil seeds

LIRA – The Erute North County Oil Seed Farmers’ Cooperative Society Limited in Lira district has pledged to continue promoting the production and multiplication of oil seeds as well as value addition.

Denis Owera, the secretary of the cooperative said they want to mainly boost the production of sunflower and soybean as well as bulking so as to get good prices.

“Another thing that we are looking at is developing our financial capacity so that we advance small loans to our farmers so that they don’t sell their produce to the middlemen cheaply,” he said.

Owera was on Monday speaking at Agweng town council in Lira as he highlighted the successes of the cooperative registered in 2020 with 32 members.

According to him, the cooperative has since grown to 2,610 members with three cooperatives affiliate cooperatives under it such as Agweng, Odoro Oil Seed Producers, and Aromo Farmers.

“We are working very hard to increase our membership so that we reach the level of area cooperative enterprise since we cover five administrative units,” he said.

He said last year they experienced a growth of 6 percent in both earnings and production of sunflower and soybeans.

“The bigger picture of the cooperative is that we are working hard to see that we focus more on oil seed production and seed multiplication,” he said.

Owera also explained that most of their farmers have land ranging from four to seven hectares.

He added that their planting projection for the season is 17 metric tons of sunflower seeds, even though government gave them seven tons through National Agricultural Advisory Services [NAADS] which went to a handful of farmers.

Emmanuel Ogwang, a seed producer and a member of the cooperative, encouraged fellow farmers to plant quality seeds if the fight against poverty is to be successful.

https://thecooperator.news/ipara-cooperative-needs-tractor-to-boost-oil-seed-production/

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