(ERGO) – Maano Nur Hassan has not been able to open her fresh vegetable stall in Jowhar since 17 June despite the availability of an abundance of produce grown on local farms.
Prices of tomatoes, onions, and potatoes have been forced down by the glut of grain and fresh produce that farmers have been unable to export to other regions due to flooded roads in Jowhar.
Maano, the main provider for her family of seven children, is among hundreds of vegetable sellers struggling to make a profit from the rock-bottom prices. A bucket of tomatoes that she used to sell for $5 is now going for just $1.
“The main reason our businesses shut down is because the prices of fresh produce dropped heavily and we can’t make profits. But we ha loans to pay and it’s become very hard. We were forced to close our shops and go home to our children, and we’re now faced by big challenges,” Maano said.
She had been earning $8-10 a day from the business she started in 2018 with a $300 loan from a relative. With her husband unemployed, she supports the household, including paying the $26 tuition fees for her three children in school.
Her husband took 12 kilograms of flour, rice and sugar from a local store on credit on 15 June and they are cooking just one meal a day. She has not paid the rent for her stall for the past two months.
With the first good rainfall after three years of drought, Jowhar farmers had been looking forward to making good profits from their harvests. However, recent floods have made the main roads impassable.
Kasim Omar Abdullahi, a farmer, had to take his maize, sorghum, tomatoes and bananas to the local market to sell off before they went bad. But a kilo of maize or sorghum that used to sell for $1 was down to just $0.25.
“Prices have plunged and it’s because of the river floods that have cut off the roads. Our crops would be taken to Mogadishu but they can’t reach there now with water in all four directions,” he complained.
Kassim and his wife and eight children are consuming the grain they had grown to sell as cash crops and taking loans from local businessmen to buy their household needs. He had invested $1,500 in his farm and has not made enough from sales to break even.
The head of the farmers’ cooperative in Jowhar, Muhyadin Abdullahi Mohamud, said around 8,000 farmers in Jowhar and nearby areas had been struggling to transport their produce across the flood water to markets in other areas.
He complained that flooding had become a major problem for the farming community in this breadbasket region of Somalia.
“The farmers have been faced with many hardships. Sometimes floods destroy the crops on the farms, or the roads gets blocked and they can’t get their crops across. We invested in fertilisers, pesticides and other costs but all we have got is losses. Seeds are expensive and that has left us farmers with great debts,” he said.
