RASD, Nkokonjeru, Uganda · 14 May 2025
Farmer Celebration Day
Forty vanilla gardens judged. A motorcycle, three bicycles and a row of wheelbarrows for the best-kept farms. And a bike race through the villages the vanilla comes from.
The day
In May 2025 we spent two days walking the vanilla gardens around Nkokonjeru with the Rural Agency for Sustainable Development (RASD), farm by farm: how the vines were trained, whether the soil was mulched, how much shade the trees gave, how the flowers were being pollinated. Forty gardens were scored.
On 14 May everyone came to RASD for the results. The morning started with the Tour de Nkokonjeru, a 40 km bicycle race flagged off by the area’s Member of Parliament. Then speeches, lunch for everyone, and the prizes.
The prizes were chosen for one reason: transport. A farmer with no way to move vanilla takes whatever price is offered at the gate. A motorcycle, a bicycle or a wheelbarrow changes who they can sell to, and what the beans fetch.
The winners
Tap a farmer to see their farm on the map. Places are out of the forty gardens judged; the farmers below are the ones you can trace your vanilla to.
Places 5 to 19 each received a wheelbarrow. Every other placed farmer took home a tarp for drying beans. Four of the top nineteen places went to growers outside the Buji programme, so they are not on the map and not listed here.
In pictures
Photographs from the day at RASD.
The same morning
Tour de Nkokonjeru
Forty riders, one loop through Nkokonjeru, Kigenda and Kasubi on the red roads the vanilla travels to the curing house. The winner came home in 1 hour 33 minutes. Watch five short clips on the map.