Minting cash from mixed farming

There is another side to Mr Drake Guloba Kintu, proprietor of Masaka’s two popular night spots, Drake’s Pub, on Edward Avenue, and Offroad Motel, on Nakayiba lane in Masaka City.

Kintu, 43, is also an accomplished farmer, working on some three and half acres where he keeps pigs and grows, vegetables, fruits, bananas, and coffee.

The farm is located in Bisanje Village on Mutukula highway in Masaka. “When you run a busy night spot as I do, you have little to occupy you during the day,” he told Seeds of Gold.
How he started
“So farming became an attractive idea to me, especially after buying this piece of land six years ago. And now that I have diversified the enterprises and I am into hospitality there is need to provide meals to the guests at my hotel. I should therefore be able to produce food items such as vegetables, matooke, fruits, eggs, and other food stuffs at my personal farm. Offroad motel is one of my farm’s most valued customers,” says Kintu.

Kintu, who is a father of three children says he has also come to learn, following the Covid-19 pandemic total lockdown, that it is wise for town dwellers to engage in some farming activity.

“By producing my own food I have been able to go through the lockdown without much worry about how to feed my family. Besides that there is money that can be made out of farming.”

He would time and again ride a bicycle during the lockdown from Kirumba to Bisanje six kilometres away to work on his farm.
A few years after he purchased that piece of land he entered into a government contract to make Robusta coffee seedlings for the Operation Wealth Creation (OWC) project.

“I prepared more than one million coffee seedlings with the approval of Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) which were all taken by OWC and distributed to farmers in 2018. The government has unfortunately delayed to pay me but the price was Shs350 for a seedling and I am waiting to be paid Shs350m for the seedlings that I supplied.”
Irrigation
In the process of preparing the coffee seedlings he had to install a water irrigation system complete with water pipes extending all over the farm and an electric pump that draws water from a tunnel dug in the garden, 100ft deep. That irrigation infrastructure has continued to benefit him in his other farm enterprises such as watering his vegetables and other crops and for his livestock to drink.
Mixed farmer
Kintu also keeps pigs at the farm and before the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown he had more than 60 pigs. “I need them around because their manure is so good for my crops.”

He applies pig droppings on the banana and coffee trees. Two years ago he harvested large water melons and sold them, although he was not ready to disclose how much he earned from them.

Currently his coffee garden is intercropped with eggplant which he sells to traders in Kampala. “I sometimes grow tomatoes within the space between the rows of coffee trees,” he says.

He sells the tomatoes to traders from Kampala and others from Kenya. “Not all the farm products end up at my hotel, of course, and so there is always a need to find other markets.”
Innovation
Besides pig droppings, Kintu applies inorganic manure to his coffee and banana crops to cause vigorous growth. “After planting the banana stem or the young coffee tree I don’t completely fill up the hole where they are planted in order to provide space for runoff rainwater to collect there and to sip slowly into the root area of the crops.”

It is also in that space that Kintu puts fertilisers such as CAN or NPK. He harvests some coffee from the very first coffee trees that he planted which he always carries to his home for drying. He continues to plant more coffee and some of the trees are just over a foot high. “What I do nowadays is to plant a few trees at a time,” he says.

“Sometimes I buy as few as 20 or 30 coffee seedlings and plant them as I wait to buy more.” Since he has a lot of water right on the farm, irrigation is not his problem and he means business when he says he can plant coffee anytime without waiting for the rainy season.

His biggest challenge right now is the long delay by the government to pay him for the Robusta Coffee seedlings that he supplied to OWC. “I invested heavily in that project and I had imagined I would make some money. I had to even borrow from the bank and I have been struggling all these years trying to offset the loan.
He has a plan to buy more land and to expand his farm in case some of his neighbours are willing to sell to him any land. “This is the place where I intend to build my family residence. When I am finally settled here with my entire family, I will then go into poultry keeping because it is a very paying enterprise.”
About a quarter of an acre on his farm has no crop planted on it. “This is space for me to host parties once in a while for my friends most of whom are children from around here, he explains.
From his early youth he has had a kind heart for children, particularly the vulnerable ones. Before their relocation to a rehabilitation centre in Kalangala District some years ago nearly all the street children in Masaka Town knew his name and they went to him for help in case they fell sick and they would trust him with their valuables such as photographs.
Mixed farming: The pros and cons
•While mixed farming is beneficial, a farmer risks burning out as he spreads resources such as time, money and labour to the limit.
•One should, therefore, plan carefully lest this kind of farming turns out to be a burden as the farmer may be unable to maximise productivity.
•There is also a challenge with diseases, which may spread from one crop to another if not checked.
•To enjoy economies of scale, it should be done on a large scale.
•A farmer with less than an acre should specialise in two or three crops or livestock ventures.