What you can do with sweet potatoes to earn more income

Sweet potatoes have always been on the market and grown for both commercial and home consumption.
It would be very hard for one to believe that anything like value can be added to this tuber.

Agnes Kalya, unlike other farmers, grows and sells the sweet potatoes as well as adding value to them. She has been able to make millions thus bringing a difference in her life and that of her family.
Kalya resides and operates her farm at Ntove village in Nkoko Njeru, Mukono District.

Despite being a farmer all her life, Kalya had never made big sums of money from her produce not until in 2007 when she started growing the orange sweet potatoes that were introduced by Harvest Plus, and organisation that improves nutrition and public health in Uganda by promoting orange sweet potato that provides more vitamin A.

When Kalya started growing this specific type of sweet potatoes, she only fed her family and sold some to her neighbours and other people around the village. She would sell a small basket at Shs2,000.

Trains value addition
“I started growing orange sweet potatoes after officials from Harvest Plus introduced it to our village in 2007. We were taught about its high growth rate and the nutrition bit of it,” she recalls, adding, “We trained about things from planting to harvest time, including how a farmer can earn money.”

After the training, Kalya among other people were supplied with the potato veins to plant. Unlike other farmers who did not take it seriouly, Kalya planted the veins on a small piece of land and within a year, she had started earning from the plantation. This gave her courage to grow it again and on a bigger piece of land.
“The officials had hinted something about the nutritious benefits of the orange sweet potatoes during the training, so I made sure that I fed it to my children and I indeed realised a difference,” says Kalya.

Planting
“At the time of planting, I select where I am going to plant, then clear the land. I then hire people to start mounding the heaps on which I fix three veins. The heaps should be medium,” she says.
She normally weeds her plantations a month after planting and later prune at two and half months. She never leaves the protruding sweet potatoes outside the heap. “During pruning, I keep on covering the potatoes that have displayed on top of the heaps with soil to prevent rats from destroying them,” she says.

Harvesting
Kalya starts harvesting a the sweet potatoes at three and half months. She, however, gets out only the big ones per heap as she covers the space.
Kalya says when using this kind of harvesting, one can be able to harvest for eight months untill the ninth month when you fully harvest using a hoe. But you should know that this kind sweet potato breed never gives one good yields if grown in the same place or garden season after the other.
Market
As many people stormed Kalya’s home, in 2010, she conceived a plan to sell the potato veins, which increased her earnings.
“I continued selling the potatoes and the veins to different people wherever I went, which increased my earnings,” she says.
She started selling a sack of veins between Shs6,000 and Shs7,000 in the first years. Apparently, the sack of veins costs between Shs10,000 and Shs15,000.
Apart from selling veins to fellow farmers, Kalya supplies the veins to Harvest Plus, which earns her about Shs45m per season.

Value addition
In 2012, Kalya learned about the secret in adding value to this breed of sweet potatoes. She then received training on how to go about it.

When Kalya gets the potatoes from the garden, she washes them properly before peeling. She then chops them into small pieces with the help of a manual grater and displays the chops under the sun for seven to eight hours. When they are properly dried, she takes the material to the grinding machine at the trading centre.

Kalya then uses the potato flour to bake different pastries such as chapattis, pancakes, cakes, doughnuts, crisps. She also makes juice and flour for porridge.
“When I am baking I use potato flour an amount half of the normal baking flour for a better taste. If I have to bake mandazi with three kilogrammes of baking flour, I will use one kilogramme of potato flour and two kilogrammes of the normal baking flour and in that, I will achieve a very nice but uncommon taste,” discloses Kalya.

Achievements
From her first sale, Kalya bought two pigs each at Shs30,000. She started feeding them on sweet potatoes and veins. As the pigs multiplied, she sold off the two mature ones at Shs800,000 and bought a cow. Apparently, Kalya has more than two cows which she zero grazes in her backyard.

Challenges
Although Kalya happily talks about the good things she has achieved ever since she resorted to growing the orange sweet potatoes, she laments the hurdles such as the dry spell which affects the yield.

Future Plans
Agnes Kalya plans to purchase a grinding machine so as to grow the value addition business. Setting up a training school on how to add value to orange sweet potatoes and putting up a store where people can easily get the potato products is another thing she is focused on.