Monitor Examines A. Annua Farming in Uganda’s Kabale District
The Monitor on Monday examined the farming of Artemisia annua, the plant from which artemisinin-based combination therapies are derived, in Uganda's Kabale District. A. annua was introduced in Uganda in 2005 and was "not well received" because farmers remained hesitant to replace their food crops with the "untested cash crop on fragmented pieces of land," the Monitor reports. However, when a few farmers began growing the crop successfully, others followed. The number of farmers growing the crop has grown from an initial 350 to more than 12,000, Cleth Rugwiza, extension officer at Aflo Alpine Pharma, said.
According to the Monitor, farmers receive no-cost seedlings from the company to produce the plant, which takes about three to four months to mature before harvest. The leaves are then dried for two to three days and sold at collection centers before being taken to the factory for processing. A kilogram of dried A. annua leaves costs 1,000 Ugandan shillings, or about 60 cents, per kilogram. Robert Tumushabe, the factory supervisor of AAPL in Kabale, said the facility extracts up to 98.6% of its artemesinin from dried leaves of A. annua and that it processes 12 tons of dried leaves daily. The artemisinin is then sold on local, regional and international markets to pharmaceutical companies such as Cipla.
According to the Monitor, demand for artemisinin has grown since the World Health Organization began recommending ACTs for the treatment of malaria. However, prices on the world market have fallen from $350 per kilogram in 2005 to $200 in 2007, which has "negatively impacted on the company's bottom line," the Monitor reports. AAPL CEO Freddie Zagyenda said that the company has temporarily "slowed down on buying" the plant but that he does not expect the declining prices to affect the company's relationship with the farmers in the long term. However, farmers have said their product is rotting, and AAPL "remains reluctant to collect," the Monitor reports (Muhwezi-Bonge, Monitor, 3/3).
