Tomatoes

Labour in the rural

A lot goes wrong as it so often does when it's the first time you do something, a lot of things did not work out as i had planned with my first maize crop; i always assumed people in rural areas were hungry for work and a reason to make some money - i was to learn otherwise. My maize crop was almost late getting planted because i did not have enough hands to assist with the planting, when the planting season starts in Nanda every one is at it, the same goes for clearing, weeding and harvesting season.

And to each family or individual their farms come first. So i found myself with maize seeds,10acres of cleared land and no planters, i had to wait until those willing to work for money finished the work on their own farms before they could help me. And most of those who later offered their assistance did so because i was acquainted with them. And so it was no surprise that i struggled through the weeding season, see weeding doesn't pay as much as planting and yet it is just as tiring which means very few people will leave their comfort zones to work for the meager money offered. I ended up paying more than was the market price partly because i was new to the area but mainly because i couldn't find labourers and they knew it, if i did not pay what they asked my crop would not survive, i struggled through phase one and barely made it through phase two of weeding, as is now in retrospect evidenced with the yields.

Harvest was nothing compared to planting or weeding, harvest was the most trying of times for me, every one was busy in their fields, and everyone had a bit of money from the sales, no one was willing to work for money  - strange i thought, but this is true. I tried to persuade, coarse and finally just paid a bit more to have the youth in the community help me. Last in, last out was my case, my farm had been one of the last to be planted and it would also become one of the last to be harvested, and by this time the rains had began to fall. I needed the sun to dry the harvest and its seemed my luck was out - i struggled through drying the maize so as to preserve and allow the cost to rise a bit, for i couldn't sell at the current low price which was just pitiful considering what i had spent not mentioning the disappointing yield.

I stored the maize anyhow hoping the sun would shine bright for at least a week straight, but as i waiting the maize not properly dried begun to moist and turn yellow - which is a sign of ferment - for i had made a mistake of not storing the maize on its cobs , but  i was thinking about the storage space and everyone seemed to agree it would shine soon and told me the rains were early and so i had done away with the maize cobs a little too prematurely.

But like i said before i did not do too badly with the maize that my grandma did not receive a bag of posho, with the high food prices, she is grateful not to buy this main part of her meal and to tell her i grew it myself! That's go to get her smiling.

The pigs

A pig feeding/having its meal . Photo credit: Martin

Done weeding

Thank God for I done with the second round of weeding this planting seasons today, and the next thing that I’m to do is spraying my tomatoes and cabbages with pesticide to protect  them from pest.The tomato plants have started flowering so i think pretty soon it will start bearing it fruit. I’m happy for that cause my research is going as I expected. I just can’t explain my joy however i am still cautionary as an English proverb goes "Don’t count your chicks before they hatch". I’m also planning to introduce bee keeping but I am still carrying out research about it,if all goes well i should begin mid next month.

Harvest

We harvested the maize using the local people in the area although they charged me a lot more than usual because they had money form their own harvest. I harvested the 10acres which gave us less than what we had expected to get, this was because the second round of weeding was not done very well. I was disappointed with what was got but I didn’t let it put me down cause it was the first time I was doing agriculture on my own and when it's your first time doing something you will be faced with some challenges, so that didn’t let my hopes down. 

I decided to plant second season which started in September during this time I purchased some bulls that would help me ox-plow the land, I cleared the land after which I  plowed it and planted maize, I have reduced on the acres form ten to just seven to allow for effective management. I look forward to the next harvest , to see how many bags I can get from each acre of maize planted and the total from all seven acres. I also decided to introduce new crops like tomatoes, cabbages, onions. I’m researching if these crops can also do well in the area before I can get into full production next year during the first season, i planted about one acre which I’m handling well at the moment.

Growing Maize

The rocketing food prices did not escape me as a pig farmer, I feed my pigs on maize bran, vegetation and when my pocket allows i buy blood from the cattle slaughter houses. However with the inflation I went from buying a kilogram of maize bran at 100 to 1200 Ugandan shillings in the space of 3 months. It was so difficult to adjust to these high prices, and so i decided to grow some maize, the plan was to mill it into flour for sale and feed the bran to my pigs, with about 50 pigs to feed this would be quite a saving......perfect idea right!

And so I leased some 10acres of land, had it cleared and the maize planted, i was to learn that maize is not as easy a crop as i expected, well I guess this being my first crop I had a lot to learn, there was the planting  season for instance, Nanda has two planting seasons as opposed to my home village in northern Uganda where maize is grown once a year. I also learned that the maize crop required two weeding rounds in a singular plating if the crop was to do well. It  was a tough planting season but i have taken the lessons the same mistakes will not be made next plating season.

How it all started years back

Farming has always been my dream, from childhood when I used to see my dad grow some crops like maize and rice in Lira. My dad would take me with him whenever he would be visiting his farm. I thus grew to love agriculture from a tender age of 10 year, when I turned 20 years it was the moment when I had to make the biggest decision of my life. I questioned myself where I would want to be in the next five years, and so i took the idea I had and decided to put it into practice because there is a huge gap in the agricultural business in Uganda and Africa at large, our government and those who could afford to do not engage in farming  to its fullest potential.

In the beginning of 2009 I was now 21 years old, and begun to research about my idea and so it dawned on me there would be a hindrance, how was i to get the finances to start my dream, i went to my sister and asked her to loan me some four hundred thousand Ugandan(160US$), she agreed to lend me the money. Once i had the I decided to purchase a few piglets, for my research had revealed that piggery was a more profitable business due to the high demand for pork in Uganda for there are many pork joints around the country. So i purchased four piglets at the cost of fifty thousand shillings (20US$) at that time and leased some land (50squaremetres) in a place called Kigumba along Kampala-Gulu highway for which I paid ten thousand shilling (4US$) for a month.

Towards the end of 2009 i had 35pigs and piglets however in September that I had to start my 2 year diploma course in Business Administration.I asked one my cousin to come and help me with keeping the pigs and every two weeks I would be going to Kigumba and checking on the pigs, an so i set off for books, i sent money for feeding and other operational expenses between September 2009 to December 2010 and my cousin was doing well helping me. We had done so well and we now had a sizable number of pigs, my plan was to sell some during my break in holidays January 2011 but i to take my dad for treatment in India and that is when things started changing.

When i came back I found that my cousin had sold some of my pigs when I asked him for the money he could not give me accountability, my investigations led me to discover a changed lifestyle for he had taken to the bottle. I would not taken any chances so i decided to remove him from my project and called upon my bother Richard to help me. By March Richard was now in control and quite settled in.I spent a lot of time with the project during the transition and decided to grow my own feeds for the pigs so that I could reduce on always having to buy feeds.I was feeding them on maize brand and so we cultivated ten hectors of land with maize which did very well and when I got done with books in June, I joined Richard just in time for harvest. I am now mostly based at my farm and making strides one day at a time.