How farmers in Burundi banded together to get fair prices for avocados

Associated Press

KAYANZA, Burundi (AP) — Farmers in a remote part of Burundi know to look for a truck parked by a highway when they want to sell their avocados. They watch crews working for export companies in neighboring African countries weigh and load the crated fruits. Such roadside exchanges long provided a ready market for small-scale avocado growers in a country that’s sometimes ranked as the world’s poorest. But the transactions now promise real earnings as well thanks in part to farmers’ cooperatives that worked to set terms for foreign avocado dealers. Just a year ago, farmers selling their avocados to the transporters earned 10 cents per kilogram. These days, they get roughly 70 cents for the same quantity.