USAID/FAS Project Supports Establishment of Collection Tents To Facilitate Access to Export Markets

Approximately 1,700 smallholder tomato, onion, pomegranate, and fennel farmers competitively sold and exported their crops through collection tents established in Assiut, Sohag, and Qena governorates in Upper Egypt with the support of the Feed the Future Food Security and Agribusiness Support (FAS) project. The collection tents—centralized locations where buyers and exporters can collect crops in lieu of traveling inefficiently to a variety of fields—were established on a cost-share basis between FAS and farmer associations in the three governorates. 

The FAS-supported collection tents help farmer associations support their members by facilitating linkages between buyers and exporters, leading to sales contracts with farmers. To ensure national quality standards of the crops, the project also facilitated proper coding of the crops aggregated in the collection tents to meet the requirements of the National Food Safety Authority. 

Through the project’s support, farmers reduced the time and labor spent collecting crops, maintained an adequate quality of crops, and increased their sales volume and selling prices from the previous season, resulting in increased incomes for smallholder horticulture farmers. Pomegranate farmers using the collection tents sold 1,200 tons of pomegranates to three exporters in the 2019 season for $304,923 (4.8 million EGP), over twice the volume and three times the revenue from the previous season when farmers only sold 500 tons of pomegranate for $95,288 (1.5 million EGP). 

This season, FAS expects that farmers will sell 300 tons of onion valued at $57,173 (900,000 EGP), compared to last season’s $38,155 (600,000 EGP), and that farmers will sell 50 tons of thyme valued at $34,939 (550,000 EGP) compared to $31,762 (500,000 EGP).