Agriculture sector contributes highly to the economy and food resilience. Horticultural production is expected to provide healthy and safe diet in continuously growing populations with high demand of food. Horticultural crops are essential in healthy diet and play a greater role in improving human health. Fruits and vegetables are mostly consumed in poor and rich family due to availability and accessibility. They can be grow everywhere including in home gardens and as potted plants. Horticultural produces are rich in vitamins, mineral, sugar and fibres that contributes to reduction of food insecurity and malnutrition. Horticulture value chain is mostly practiced by women in both urban and peri-urban areas contributing to economic growth in towns. Women fall under small and marginalized farmers group facing a number of challenges in agricultural value chain. Challenges starts from cultivation, postharvest, storage and processing and value addition to enhance value of produce. These small holder farmers always struggle to improve productivity, transportation and market for their produce to sustain their families. This constitution has been developed to achieve and address the following issues;

 

Smallholder farmers are always challenged access to agricultural inputs including fertilizers, pesticides, storage facilities and poor market. This situation demoralizes their ability for production of surpluses and commercial farming. Lack of storage facilities especially for horticultural crops that are perishable causes massive post-harvest losses minimizing price and food quality. Most small holder farmers lack market information and transport which lead to massive food waste. Small holder farmers are hesitant to take new technologies, as returns from this investment are little. In addition, most small holder famers are not ready to act in free market economy. This has led to food shortage, poverty and poor marketing to take control over their own food supply and selling. Again, waste management another alarming challenge in urban and rural areas which has led to number of threats including diseases, loss of habitat and biodiversity. The association aims to empower women to turn this massive waste into commercial products and useful material for agriculture. This will create more jobs for women and reducing the reliance on men for basic needs.