This page does not carry a price list, and that is deliberate. Prices for maize, poultry feed, fertiliser, fingerlings and everything else move week to week and district to district, and a figure published once and left standing is worse than no figure at all: it gets quoted back in a negotiation months after it stopped being true. What follows is how to establish today's price for yourself, and how to use it once you have it.
Why a published price would mislead you
A single national price hides the three things that actually decide what you are paid. The first is where the sale happens, because a price quoted in a Kampala market is not the price at your gate. The second is timing, because the price at harvest, when everyone is selling, is the lowest price of the year in most seasons. The third is the unit, which is less obvious and costs more than either.
Check the unit before you check the price
Produce traded by the bag is the main place money goes missing. Bags traded in Ugandan markets have been measured averaging around 122 kg against a nominal 100 kg, with no premium paid for the extra weight. A price agreed per bag therefore moves the price per kilogramme by about a fifth, in the buyer's favour, before any bargaining starts.
Agree a price per kilogramme and weigh. If a buyer will only deal in bags, weigh a filled bag first and convert, so you know what you are actually agreeing to.
How to establish the current price
Ask more than one buyer, on the same day, for the same unit and the same quality. One quotation is an anecdote. Prices differ enough between buyers in the same town that the spread is usually worth more than any agronomy decision you will make that week.
Ask what the price is for the grade you actually have, not the grade you hope you have. Moisture content, foreign matter and damaged grain are where a quoted price becomes a lower paid price, and the deduction is made after the lorry is loaded.
Ask when payment lands. A higher price paid in three weeks is not better than a lower price paid at the gate if you have school fees due, and a buyer who pays late is charging you interest without calling it that.
Farm gate and retail are different numbers
The price you see quoted in a market report is usually a retail or wholesale price, which includes transport, handling, storage, the trader's margin and their losses. What reaches you at the gate is that figure minus all of it. Treating a market price as your expected price is the single most common reason a farm plan does not survive its first season. The difference is worked through in farm gate price versus retail price explained.
Using a price once you have it
A price on its own does not tell you whether to sell. Put it against what the crop cost you to grow, and against the yield you actually have, using the break-even calculations in farm calculators. An acre with a known cost of production has a price below which selling is worse than storing, and that threshold is yours rather than the market's.
Cost of production by enterprise is built up item by item under farming costs. Where to sell, and how to reach a buyer who pays better than the trader at the roadside, is covered under selling and buyers.
Buying inputs
The same discipline applies to what you buy. Seed, fertiliser, feed and agrochemicals are all sold at prices that vary between shops in the same town, and the cheapest is regularly the one that has been adulterated or has sat in the sun. How to check a seller before you pay is set out in farm input suppliers in Uganda.