Matovu became a farmer at 18

Charles Matovu started off as a small scale coffee farmer and a boda-boda bicycle rider at the age of 18. Today he is the owner of a maize mill and a coffee hulling factory in Kyanamukaaka, Masaka District.

Humble beginnings
Now aged 40, Matovu looks back at his humble beginning with gratitude to his late grandfather, Michael Byarugaba, who introduced him to the life of hard work.
“He taught me to work and to do any job without discrimination as long as it is not criminal,” he told Seeds of Gold in an interview at his farm.
“My father died when I was only eight and my mother, who was helpless, took me to my grandfather’s home at Kyajjunju when I was 12. He was an old man who lived alone. I would go to school and return home to do most of the household chores that included gathering firewood, cooking food, and fetching water.
“I was also responsible for growing some food items such as beans and groundnuts, besides working in our small banana garden. We had a small coffee garden too, which was our only source of income. When he sold a bag of coffee, we would then have some money in the house for purchasing our domestic requirements. That is when I began to associate coffee with money,” he recounts.

Tomato, pineapple projects
Due to school fees problems Matovu had to end his education journey after Primary Seven. It was around that time that he saw a young man who had bought a bicycle which he was using to earn a living as a boda-boda rider.
The young man also told him he had got the money after selling tomatoes that he had grown.
Matovu then set off to plant tomatoes on a rented piece of land. With the money he earned, he bought himself a bicycle and became a commercial bicycle rider too.
It was an opportunity for him to earn some money daily and save some for future investment.
Matovu thus asked a local carpenter to make him a small box with a tiny hole through which he cast some coins everyday as savings. He never abandoned tomato farming even after venturing in the boda-boda business.

Breakthrough
“I also ventured into pineapple growing on rented land. After about four years, I managed to buy my first piece of land on which coffee was already growing. I also got married to a very hardworking woman with whom I managed to raise more than 120 pigs ,which I sold to buy this piece of land on which my maize milling and coffee hulling machines stand.
He has since then been buying pieces of land in different neighbouring villages and farming.
“At one time, I was considered a model farmer and there was a plan for the Kabaka to visit my piggerry in 2009, but due to the disruption of his visit to Bugerere and the chaos that followed, the Kabaka’s visit to my farm never took place.”

Mixed farming
Matovu has a lot of faith in tomato, pineapple, and coffee farming. He said he harvests more than 100 bags of kiboko coffee (dry coffee cherries) from one of his coffee plantations that sits on 10 acres.
He also has a number of tomato gardens.
“The good thing about growing tomatoes is that if you are lucky and determined to work hard, you may reap millions of shillings within just three or four months. I took a loan of Shs90m from Micro-finance Support Centre early this year after the one I had previously got from them . Repaying the money has never been a big worry because I have crops to sell most of the time,” he said.
He pointed to a tomato garden measuring about an acre and a half from which he hoped to get a minimum of Shs50m in November.

Advice
His advice to any one going into Robusta coffee farming is to go for the best seedlings.
He said he has always grown cloned Robusta coffee whose seedlings he obtained from Kamenyamiggo District Farm Institute.

Value addition
Matovu always wanted to have his own coffee hulling factory.
“Every time I took my coffee for hulling, I wished I could have such machines myself,” he narrated.
“I wanted to diversify my money generation by engaging in such machines and it was for the same reason that I bought the maize milling machine. I now find myself busy throughout the year. If I am not working in my coffee plantations, I am attending to my tomato gardens, milling maize, selling maize flour or hulling coffee.”
When Seeds of Gold visited, he was mainly buying maize and making maize flour.
“We make and sell flour to the various schools in the neighbourhood, but we are also going into livestock feeds making. We have an immediate market for the feeds given that we have a lot of poultry farmers around.”
His principle is that if some of his projects are not generating money during a particular period, others keep him in business all year round.
He has also constructed several store rooms at the premises where the coffee and maize mill factories are located and a number of rental houses in Kyanamukaaka.

Mixed farmer
The 40-year-old Charles Matovu has a lot of faith in tomato, pineapple, and coffee farming. He said he harvests more than 100 bags of kiboko coffee (dry coffee cherries) from one of his coffee plantations sitting on 10 acres.
Yet his start was very humble. Growing up with his grand father, he knew hard work was the way to go. He started by doing menial jobs before he graduated to riding boda-boda bicycle for a living. He was not contented though as he rented land to kickstart his farming business.
His farm has grown extensively and he is acquiring credit to expand. Matovu has built knowledge and expertise through experience through diversity. He has started value addition by processing the maize and coffee he grows.
Matovu bids to become a model farmer to the youth by showing that it is possible to get rich through farming. He says that farming keeps giving if one adopts good practices.