Luwero District Farmers’ Association (LUDFA) was founded in 1997 as a farmer–owned non governmental organization whose main aim is providing agricultural advisory services to the farming community in Luwero district. It is a registered company limited by guarantee and without share capital, with a secretariat manned by technical staff and governed by a democratically elected Board. It is also a member organization of Uganda National Farmers Federation (UNFFE), an umbrella organization for farmers’ organizations distributed country wide. It has a total farmer membership of 5,200. The pineapple crop has become the main income generating enterprise for many farmers in Luwero district. The crop is highly adaptable to many parts of Luwero which are under forest/indigenous tree cover due to high organic matter content. Due to the existing soil fertility, farmers produce pineapples organically. There is an existing access to markets both locally, internationally and regional markets such as Southern Sudan (Juba) and East Africa especially Kenya. Unfortunately, farmers have not organized themselves for effective marketing and developing value chains yet pineapples have to face high perishability, volume and price uncertainty, and seasonal variability of supply chain. It is proposed therefore that farmers are provided with pineapple suckers for planting, be organized into viable production and marketing groups so as to integrate production and marketing activities, and occupy strategic positions in the value chain development. Value chains of interest to both farmers and stakeholders include transformation of fresh pineapples into products like syrups used in pharmaceuticals (Agona et al., 2002), juice extracts, sweetener jam and wine. LUDFA will need funds from external sources to contribute to improvement in pineapple productivity, raise per capita output levels, and facilitate organized marketing of pineapples as well as processing and value addition strategies. This project focuses on the integration of women and youth into the pineapple business through gender mainstreaming and sustainable pineapple production practices be introduced into the pineapple farming system. The overall goal of the project is 10% increase in acreage under pineapple production by men and women famers benefiting at-least 750 households by end of 2012. LUDFA has a partnership with SNV, (Netherlands Development Organization) for building its capacity in economic development. Recently, it entered another partnership and acquired a Rural Information System (RIS) collecting household grain production information funded by Uganda Commodity Exchange (UCE) and with support from SNV.

Luwero District Farmers’ Association (LUDFA) was founded in 1998 as a farmer-owned non governmental organization whose main aim is providing agricultural advisory services to farmers. It is also a member organization of Uganda National farmers Federation (UNFFE) and has a total membership of 5200 farmers and these have benefited from various services through partnerships with other organizations, funded agricultural projects and capacity building in crop and livestock production as well as Farmer Institutional Development (FID). LUDFA offers in partnership with other development organizations such as SNV. The organization has also promoted other projects from Agricultural Sector Programme Support (ASPS) of Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA). For instance Maize pooling and marketing project the results of which have been increased involvement of smallholder farmers in the markets and most recently, Coffee seedlings production, replanting and collective processing project. The overall purpose of this project will be to improve household incomes through raising pineapple planting materials for expansion of production acreage and promoting organized marketing of fresh pineapple fruits by 2011. More specific: Pineapple as an enterprise was selected by farmers at a stakeholders’ workshop because of its profitability potential and short term nature of generating revenue. A total of 8 farmers will be selected with each providing 3 acres of land for establishing pineapple plantations. The 8 farmers will be selected from 8 farmers groups with average membership of 25 farmers giving a sum total of 200 initial direct beneficiaries with at least 35% female and 10% youth farmers. These plantations will serve as demonstration sites, source of planting materials and fresh pineapple fruits for generating income. The objectives include: to initiate a joint venture between the 8 farmers and LUDFA for raising price. The venture targets five categories of buyers/markets namely: exporters to regional market countries such as Kenya and Southern Sudan, overseas exporters to European Union markets, local vendors, gazetted farmers – market day buyers and the newly emerging market in West-Nile region of Uganda with estimated population of about 4 million people