(7 Oct 2024)
RESTRICTIONS SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kayanza, Burundi – 19 September 2024
1. Various of avocado farmer Zacharie Munezero explaining the features on an avocado variety
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Zacharie Munezero, avocado farmer: ++PARTLY OVERLAID WITH SHOT 3++
"For a season, we can get like two million kilograms, estimation. Like two thousand tonnes (of avocado), which is still less, but for this Hass and Fuerte (varieties). For Choquette (variety), they sell it for bags (meaning: they sell a lot), Choquette and Brogden."
3. Various of crates full of avocado being sorted
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kayanza, Burundi – 18 September 2024
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Onesime Niyukuri, Foreign Trade Advisor: ++PARTLY OVERLAID WITH SHOT 5 AND 6++
"The world has actually seen that the avocado can be developed and it can also be a source of income for the producers of the crops and also for the government, for any foreign currencies by exporting enough product. We expect that in five years we will be able to export more than ten million tonnes of avocado."
5. Various shots of crates full of avocado weighed and loaded onto a lorry
6. Various of people standing next to crates full of avocado
STORYLINE:
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 materialize from villages and form a crowd, watching closely as crews working for export companies in neighbouring African countries weigh and load the crated fruits.
Such roadside exchanges, repeated regularly during peak harvest season, 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 the intervention of the national government and 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 (2.2 pounds), less than the price for small bottle of water. These days, farmers get roughly 70 cents for the same quantity, a meaningful increase for people who mainly farm to feed their families.
Another change: Payments in U.S. currency now go into the bank accounts of farmers’ cooperatives that pay their members directly almost as soon as the avocado haulers leave.
Acting as intermediaries, groups such as Green Gold Burundi, which has its headquarters in the northern province of Kayanza and represents 200,000 farmers nationwide, are better positioned than individual growers to ensure they are not getting exploited.
The participation of the cooperatives is an important step toward regulating the country’s avocado exports, according to Ferdinand Habimana, vice president of Green Gold Burundi’s administrative board.
Although Burundi President Évariste Ndayishimiye has described avocados as a way to diversify exports, there are no origin labelling requirements for the pear-shaped green fruits grown in Burundi.
“So it is legally done now, but what we are developing now is that the [avocados] can reach the final destination as avocados taken from Burundi,” said Habimana, speaking of his group’s dealings with exporters in Tanzania and elsewhere in the region.
Zacharie Munezero, who oversees quality management for Green Gold Burundi, acknowledged that the 70 cents farmers can earn for a kilogram of avocados is still too little when exporters can fetch between $3 and $5 for the same quantity in international markets.
AP video by Biran Inganga
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