“We buy at higher prices from farmers and when we come here we’re making losses,” she says. “At first, a dish of tomato was at 13,000 kwacha; now we buy it at 28,000. People don’t have money, so it is a difficult situation for everyone.”
“The farmers with large-scale farms to the medium scale, they always do mechanisation, like hiring tractors to work, so those are equally affected because fuel has gone just too high,” he says. He is in favour of a return to traditional practices to plug the gap. “We need to experiment with indigenous methods as well,” Njolomole says. “If they work and help the farmers to maximise their outputs while reducing the cost of production, let farmers use them, as long as they work.”Photograph: Courtesy of William Biliati
“Demand has grown, but I can’t sustain it at the current cost of production,” she says. “Most people are now asking to acquire the product on loan, which is risky. I am worried about the village shop owners who used to buy from me and resell in their villages.”