On a hot afternoon on Tuesday, January 28, 2014, Yohannes Wondimu, 24, was chewing prunes near his home around the St. Rufael Church in Gulele District. There are seven trees bearing the fruit in his family compound.
The family never intended to become prune farmers, but the amount of produce has meant that they sell the fruit from each tree for 500 Br to juice shops.
A seasonal tree, the prune blossoms in the month of January and stays until mid-February, when all the leaves dry up and fall to the ground. Little leaves start to grow only seven months down the line in mid-September.
Although they have managed to sell the fruit from only two of the seven trees, they hope to sell the remaining five within a month’s time before they dry up.
Prunes, locally known as prim, are consumed fresh and as is, but actually they can be dried and consumed later, according to some studies. In other countries they make juice and soups out of it and use it in pastries. The farmers who came to Atkilt Tera also say that the fruit can be used to fatten sheep and to get more milk from cows.
The prunes at Atkilt Tera are coming from the Gulele to Burayu area in Addis Abeba and nearby Oromia, as well as the Sebat Bet area of Gurage Zone. But Arba Minch, Gamo Gofa and Chencha are also known for growing the fruits.
In Addis Abeba, the fresh fruit, filled in transparent plastic bags, hangs on every fruit store like Christmas décor. In the early hours of Wednesday, just before sunrise, shops and vendors at Atkilt Tera – the large vegetable, fruits and fish market in Piazza, Arada District – were displaying large amounts of prunes to visitors.
Mohamed Adem, a farmer from Ezha – one of the prune growing areas of Ethiopia, located in the Gurage Zone of the Southern Region, about 121 km from Addis Abeba -arrived there at 6am on Thursday, January 30, 2014. Although he mainly grows enset (false banana), potatoes and barely, his prune trees have blossomed. He bought large quantities of prune from other farmers in Ezha and came to sell them at Atkilt Tera.
To bring the prunes to Addis Abeba, Mohammed and other farmers rent a medium-sized Isuzu lorry for 4,000 Br for a single trip. The lorry can carry from 30 to 50 baskets of prune, depending on the size, with one basket weighing between 45kg to 100kg. They are expected to pay a 16 Br tax for a single basket when they cross Ezha woreda, he says.
Mohammad brought five big baskets weighing around 80-85kg each. On that day, the Atkilt Tera traders were buying the prunes for 8.5Br a kilo, paying Mohammed 3,485 Br for his five baskets, which, together, weighed 410kgs.
Mohammed and his friends pay 150Br for a tree, whose yield could fill one basket, they say. They also pay an average transport fee of 100 Br, which brings his total cost, excluding labour, to 1,330 Br, leaving him with about 2,155 Br. He makes similar sales every two to three days for the entire season.
In fact another farmer from Oromia was saying that he was able to collect 480kgs from just one of his trees, 70kgs more than what Mohammed said he collected from five trees. This farmer,Abdella Shikur, 43, mainly a spinach farmer, has been selling prunes for the past 19 years from his own farm in Menagesha, 32 km from Addis Abeba. On Thursday, he was at Atkilt Tera with 10 crates of prunes, which weighed 600kgs together.
Sinishaw Nega earns income weighing prunes, putting aside for a while his usual business of selling vegetables at Atkilt Tera. He charges four Birr for each basket and crate he weighs on his balance.
He does that until around 9am, by which time most Atkilt Tera merchants are done for the day. After that, Sinishaw goes back to his vegetable business, after earning 600 Br from weighing as many as 150 baskets and crates, by his own count.
“It is very profitable and I cannot miss it,” he said.
The fruit sells at 8.50 brper kilo wholesale and 20 br per kilo to consumers.
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