Gooseberries lured me into farming – Rullonga

Monica Rullonga explains how she grows gooseberries. PHOTOs by tony mushoboroozi

What you need to know:

Each kilogramme of gooseberries goes for no less than Shs15,000 farm-gate price. However, bulk buyers have stronger bargaining powers, writes Tony Mushoborozi

Monica Rullonga’s love for gooseberries started in her early childhood. The journey to the well was incomplete without a detour to the bushes to hunt for them. While working the family farms in the hills of Nyarushanje deep in South Rukungiri, gooseberries were a welcome snack for young Rullonga and her siblings.
These tiny wild fruit that come wrapped such as candy had the power to bestow a sense of awe, independence and wildness to children in the countryside. To have a taste of the soft yellow balls of freedom, one had to enter the bush, often against the parents’ wishes. One of the dangers that parents warned children about gooseberry hunting was snakebites but that only seemed to heighten the thrill of it all. Although gooseberries have always been extremely popular with children and adults alike, no one seemed to want to farm them.

Starting
As Rullonga said goodbye to childhood, her close relationship with gooseberries became strained and distant. She could no longer roam the bushes to look for them.
Fast forward to the present, Rullonga runs a nine-acre farm. She started it mainly to ensure food security for her three children and husband. Ironically, when she was planting the matooke and the coffee and all kinds of vegetables, she totally forgot about gooseberries.
Yet by the time she was setting up the farm in a fertile valley in Maya on Masaka road, gooseberries had started appearing on the market.
She always bought them from roadside markets and relive her childhood memories but because she grew up in an era when gooseberries were not farmed, she didn’t think of it. Then one day, gooseberries came knocking on her door in a zany trick of fate.
Gooseberry farming
“It did not take long for my husband to know that I love gooseberries so much. So every time he saw them on sale, he bought some for me. Last December, he bought some and forgot them in the car long enough for them to get spoilt,” Rullonga says.
Disappointed, Rullonga just casually threw the spoilt berries away. And as fate would have it, they had all germinated before she knew it. At that time, she was preparing her home compound to plant flowers. But because the seedlings were blooming excellently, she decided to plant gooseberries in the stead of flowers. “In less than two months,” Rullonga says, “they had started flowering. Before long, the whole family was eating as much as they wanted. The children were as in love with them as I used to be when I was their age. In about four months we were harvesting so much that no amount of snacking could stop them from spoiling. We did not know what to do with the extra. So we started making juice from them, and smoothies, and giving to friends. Still the harvest was plentiful.”

Market
That is when an idea presented itself to Rullonga. She could package them and look for market. She says, “I approached Magekana, a fruit company in Lugogo that imports and exports all types of fruits. I took five kilogrammes at first. I was shocked at the response. In less than two days, I was called and asked to supply more.” “Not long after that, the company connected me to someone who asked me to supply 50 kilogrammes on a weekly basis. This was a large supermarket chain that I could supply all year around. It was exciting but with my few plants (about 100 plants) I can only manage between 15 and 20 kilogrammes a week. Nonetheless, gooseberries were luring me into fulltime farming,”

The juicy figures
Each kilogramme of gooseberries goes for no less Shs15,000 farm-gate price. However, bulk buyers have stronger bargaining powers.
A kilogramme goes for Shs10,000 to bulk buyers like supermarkets. That means that Rullonga would make roughly Shs1m a week if she were to supply 100 kilogrammes.
“This is from a plant that does not need too much care,” she says. “All these plants need is watering in the early days and mulching.
With that done in time and sufficiently, there’s need for pesticides, which otherwise eat up a great percentage of the running cost in other farms like passion fruits and tomatoes.” Rullonga’s farm is currently as small as a 50 by 100 feet plot. Her plan is to expand it to half an acre and depending on how things go, more expansions in the future.
On top of growing goose berries, matooke, coffee, she’s trying her hand on strawberries. She also rears pigs, chickens and goats, all propping each other up in a symbiotic mix.
Away from farm
That is when It takes a lot to lure a PhD holding management expert into farming.
Rullonga is the Academic Registrar at Ernest Cook Ultrasound Research and Education Institute (ECUREI). Based in Mengo Hospital, ECUREI is a centre of excellence in modern ultra sound diagnosis and imaging.
She is also lecturer in several institutions of higher education on a part time basis and also runs MART Consult Ltd, a private management consultancy firm.
If you are asking yourself how anyone could consider leaving all that for farming, you are not alone. But figures don’t lie. Rullonga says with enthusiasm.