Best Farmers 2025: Alito Joint Multipurpose cooperative is Lango's shining light
It motivated many farmers to join us and our number increased from 5 to 58 in the same year at the end of the second season
VISION GROUP | HARVEST MONEY | BEST FARMERS | LANGO
When you speak about Alito Joint Multipurpose cooperative in Lango, almost everybody will locate or memorize the district housing the cooperative due to its deep links with farmers in quality seed and farm produce.
The cooperative located at Awilo village, Lwala parish in Okwerodot Sub County, Kole district started decades ago with five members (two male and three female).
It has since grown, boasting 16,815 members scattered across northern Uganda.
Alito, is highly dependent on soya bean quality seed production as their main value chain for profitability, sustainability and growth. The annual harvest is over 200 tonnes, earning sh500m per year, according to the chairperson, Rev John Christopher Okwang. The cooperative has 16 staff.
At the co-operative’s inception in 1998, the founders would harvest about 1,000kg of grain, which they would bulk and sell to Uganda Oilseed Producer Association (UOSPA). Their model drew the attention of other farmers in Kole and neighbouring districts according to Okwang.
To scale up, the founders started with seed multiplication for sunflower and beans, which Okwang says UOSPA officials would buy and distribute to farmers.
He says then in 2004, UOSPA trained farmers in the area on group dynamics where they could farm, bulk and sell their produce together.
“It motivated many farmers to join us and our number increased from 5 to 58 in the same year at the end of the second season,” he recalled.
As the co-operative kept on with oilseed multiplication, the harvest in the area was huge, but there was no factory to process the produce. This changed in 2004 when Mukwano industries set up an oil mill in Lira district.
“It [the industries] boosted our efforts in sunflower production by providing agronomy training, post-harvest handling and accessing ready market for the grains,” he said.
The next big deal for the cooperative was a project to promote oilseed production funded by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.
According to Okwang, FAO initiated and organised a competition targeting oilseed producer farmers. Alito Joint Cooperative outcompeted others groups and were awarded a sunflower milling machine.
“More farmers continued to join us.”
The co-operative expanded further in 2009 courtesy of the United States Agency for International Development.
He said the UN agency constructed a storage facility with the capacity of 120 metric tonnes, gave the co-operative a motorcycle and a computer for data collection.
In the same year, according to Okwang, other partners also constructed a store for the cooperative since the members were rapidly growing and production was becoming higher.
Okwang said in 2013 another partner, International Seed Development, trained 10 cooperatives in seed production in northern Uganda.
This is the tenth year running that Vision Group, together with the Embassy of the Netherlands, KLM Airlines, dfcu Bank and Koudijs Animal Nutrition, are running the Best Farmers competition. The 2025 competition run from March to November, culminating in today’s awards ceremony.