Burundi farmers band together to get fair prices for avocados

Farmers in a remote part of Burundi know to look for a truck parked by a highway when they want to sell their avocados.

They materialize from villages and form a crowd, watching closely as crews working for export companies in neighboring African countries weigh and load the crated fruits.

Such roadside exchanges, repeated regularly during peak harvest season, long provided a ready market for small-scale avocado growers in a country…