Florence is an Agriculturalist by profession with close to 15 years working experience in agriculture research, rural development work in sustainable and organic agriculture, natural resource management with community participation, and agribusiness sector.
Florence has worked as a Project Leader and Consultant in the agribusiness sector for close to eight years now, supporting farmer organisations to promote productivity, quality improvements, and facilitating collective marketing for domestic and international markets. Florence has solid experience supporting value chain organisation, linking value chain actors like farmers and buyers. She has specifically worked with organised farmer organisations and agribusiness export orientated companies in Uganda dealing in the coffee, tea, cocoa, honey, essential oils production, vanilla, and the horticulture sector.
She has a track record of supporting farmer organisations and export orientated companies to set up certifiable systems to voluntary and market led social and other environmental and ethical standards for example; Fairtrade standards, Fair Trade for IMO, Utz certified, 4C, and organic certification to the EU’s organic regulation-834/2007, and the National Organic Programme (NOP) for USA. Besides having good practical experience with setting up certifiable systems to the named standards, Florence is an experienced trainer in technical aspects like crop agronomy, integrated pest management, quality management systems, farmer group organisation and development. With a track record of working with farmer organisations and agribusiness export companies, Florence has a good understanding of the coffee value chain, the challenges it faces as a sector, and has an eye of identifying viable opportunities for the actors and supporters in the coffee value chain.