Farm better, save more: Tororo farmers’ group transforming lives
Members of the various farmers’ groups are trained in better farming techniques, in addition to other aspects that can enable them practice agriculture as a business. Photo by Roland D. Nasasira
Before Josephine Omita joined a village saving association in her village of Pore, in Soni Parish, Kirewa Sub County in Tororo District, she and the husband Peter Omita were living in a grass-thatched house. In that life, her main challenge was getting a daily home income to buy household items like soap and salt.
Putting food on the table for her family was also a challenge as she would first go to offer labour in people’s gardens to make some money.
Around the same time, her husband had been diagnosed with tuberculosis and admitted for two months at Busolwe Hospital in Butaleja District.
She would also struggle to take the husband to different hospitals in Tororo to seek better medical attention in vain.
As fate would have it, one day while she was at her home in Pore village, a neighbour asked Josephine Omita if she had heard of savings groups. “My neighbour had identified me as a hard working person in the gardens and asked me to join the village savings loan association,” Josephine Omita recalls.
From there, she registered with the women’s guild with Shs2,500 that Josephine Omita and other women farmers acquired training on saving money, livestock management, agronomy, cooperative marketing, financial management, and crop value addition, among others.
The training was provided by World Vision Uganda through its Kirewa Area Development Programme and each member is required to save Shs1,000 or more per week.
Besides the saving weekly association, Josephine Omita is part of another group called Merry-Go Round where they raise money on a weekly basis.
“When we collect money and give it to a member, the next time it is given to another member to use it to start up or invest in a business,” she explains. She operates a mandazi baking business and has been borrowing money from the village savings association to invest in farming and her produce has increased.
“Before I joined the savings association, I used to harvest three bags of rice. But with more investment in my rice gardens, I’m now able to harvest six to seven bags of rice,” Josephine Omita says.
Benefits of savings
As a member of Soni Kayinja Women’s guild which is registered under KFDA, she is entitled to the benefits including receiving training to startup businesses away from agriculture, among others.
How farmers use modern farming skills
In order to help farmers realise their full potential, KFDA promoted commercial agriculture by encouraging farmers to use modern farming technologies like fertilizer application, pesticides, organic manure and improved varieties.
Zero grazing
The association trains farmers to keep heifers in a well-constructed shelter but should also establish pasture gardens from where they cut and carry it to the heifers. They also provide enough clean water for the animal on a daily basis and other feed supplements such as maize bran with premix to meet the animal nutritional requirements.
This method has enabled farmers to obtain yields of 15-18 litres of milk a day and enough manure to use in their plantations.
Mulching
Under mulching, farmers use plant residues like dry grass and rice husks that they spread on the surface in the kitchen gardens especially in the tomato plots, Sukumawiki and eggplant demo gardens. This helps reduce production costs on labour for weeding. It also reduces loss of moisture content from the soil by preventing direct penetration of the sun rays.
Organic farming
Farmers are urged to use bio slurry from KFDA’s biogas plant to obtain different plant materials and decompose it for one and a half to two months. They later apply it in the fruit gardens to improve soil fertility. They also use organic pesticides made out of the decomposition of different plant parts and apply it to control pest infestation in the apiary project. This has helped the farmers to meet all the market demands.
Integrated pest management
Farmers use a combination of pest control methods in their fruit farms. For example, they use turkeys that eat up the orange dog which is a common pest in oranges, and also hand pick them on top of using other recommended pesticides. This method has been effective in most farmers’ fruit farms for the control of orange dog pest.
Push and pull
With all farmer groups registered under KFDA, this is a new farming technology aimed at eradicating parasitic weed known as Striga, common in cereal crops like maize and sorghum.
Farmers are trained to apply this technology in maize, they integrate desmodium pasture legume in a maize garden that helps in the production of chemical substance that suppress the maturity of Striga weed.
This ensures that Striga weeds do not germinate to compete with maize and this leads to healthy growth of maize.
Still under pull and push technology, the farmers include elephant grass on the boundaries of the maize garden that helps to break the life cycle of the maize stalk borer since it produces chemical substance that attracts to lay.
That way, the maize grows without being attacked by the stalk borer, thereby giving the farmers high yield in maize production.
Collective marketing
Under collective marketing, KFDA does bulking of farmer’s produce like honey and rice for value addition and also collective bargaining for better prices.
We fix prices for farmer produce and collect marketing information because some farmer’s don’t know how to brand and package their produce,” Andrew Oboth Wakera, KFDA project coordinator points out.
Credit services
The association also relies on credit services like village banking for financial management and growth and village savings and loans association management for investment and other social benefits.
“We set up credit services at village banks because they increase household income through local investment by the farmers’ groups. The quick loan accessibility at a low interest rate of six percent with minimal monthly charges motivates farmers to work hard,” he explains.
Move forward
After government realised great potential of community transformation and development within the farmers’ group, it donated a rice huller to to add value to the rice grown locally. Prior to acquiring the machine, rice farmers in Kirewa sold off their rice at low prices.
As a way of bringing about community development, KFDA buys produce like rice and maize for value addition from farmers who are not members of the group.
“We buy inputs like piglets and banana suckers from the local community at a better price and we use them for supply on contract to government and other interested farmers and organisations,” Wakera says.
As KFDA strives to move forward, its operations do not come without challenges.
“We still have low capital base both for value addition and SACCO business yet the demand for our products like improved mango and oranges and other fruit tree species is overwhelming,” Wakera points out, adding that meeting transport costs for making the necessary follow-ups and monitoring of all the 120 farmer groups in Kirewa is still a challenge to the association.
How KDFA works
Kirewa farmers Development Association (KFDA) is a community based farmers’ group in Kirewa Sub-county in Tororo District.
Established in 2009, KFDA is a produce, marketing and learning platform for farmers. Among other objectives, it mobilisea farmers to save for investment through village savings and loans association, village banking system and bulk farmers produce for value addition and collective marketing.
After World Vision Uganda through Kirewa Area Development Program was introduced in Kirewa Sub County as an umbrella organisation, the organisation built the capacity of Kirewa Farmer’s Development Association through training of its members on among other things, saving, livestock management and agronomy. Thereafter, KFDA then embarked on mobilising and encouraging its registered farmers in village saving loan associations to buy shares from their respective farmer groups and start up development projects.
With knowledge from training, it saw the numbers of groups increase from 19 farmer groups in 2009 to 120 farmer’s groups in 2015.
Altogether, there are 2,300 farmers with 1,600 women and 700 men and 3,400 children directly benefiting from KFDA interventions. For a farmer’s village saving loan association group to be registered under KFDA, Andrew Oboth Wakera, the KFDA project coordinator explains that they have to pay Shs50,000 for them to be able to acquire training about improved farming.
He explains that the association is driven on three major pillars through which its activities are implemented to the community. “We embrace sustainable production where there is mobilisation of farmers to produce on large scale through improved agronomic practices like zero grazing, mulching, organic farming, use of improved planting materials, integrated pest management, push and pull technology,” Wakera says, adding that the association also uses fruit tree production using shade net system and green house technology.
They also promote energy saving technologies like solar, biogas production and farmer managed natural regeneration for sustainable production.
