Chinese and I went to Bakadaji to sell Fatou’s groundnuts (peanuts). We brought 1/3 of her harvest to sell: 60 kilograms. Bakadaji is a groundnut consolidation point. There are consolidation points around the country to gather the groundnut harvest from farmers for resale. The idea is to give all the farmers a fair price for groundnuts, and get the harvest to a centralized point for storage, shipment, resale etc.
The groundnuts are repackaged into standardized bags and weighed. The farmer is then immediately paid for his harvest and the groundnuts are loaded onto trucks. In the past the process has had some problems with getting the farmers paid, but this year everything seemed to run smoothly. For the 60 kilos we were paid 500 dalasis. That’s about 8 dalasis a kilo. For the amount of work put into each kilo it’s a ridiculously low price. It translates into fractions of pennies on the hour for labor per person. But it’s the going rate for groundnuts nationwide.
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