You can earn extra income from urban farming

What you need to know:

  • Very likely your neighbours would not want to spend money boarding a boda-boda or driving to the market to purchase vegetables, milk, and eggs.
    As a farmer and producer of the items you would most probably charge less for your products than any trader in the market would.

Most people living in urban areas have to buy their food. Some of them go to restaurants for their meals and others buy the food items and take them to their homes.

For many of those who buy their food from markets, its transportation to their homes often costs money. However, it is possible for people living in towns not only to grow their own food but also to engage in commercial farming.

Just imagine you are a livestock farmer, keeping poultry and two or three Frisian cows on perhaps half or a quarter of an acre where you also had a garden of some vegetables in a densely settled area.

Very likely your neighbours would not want to spend money boarding a boda-boda or driving to the market to purchase vegetables, milk, and eggs.
As a farmer and producer of the items you would most probably charge less for your products than any trader in the market would.

There was an article in the August 3 2020 digital AGRA publication titled: “Urban agriculture thriving in East Africa during Covid-19”authored by Richard Wetaya.
It was written in the article, “Kampala typically depends primarily on agricultural produce grown by farmers in outlying areas of the country. But the lockdown and transport restrictions disrupted the links between rural and urban areas, threatening the city’s food security. In response, urban and peri-urban farmers began catering to the city’s numerous food markets, where they’re doing a roaring trade in leafy vegetables, Irish potatoes, plantain, corn, fruits, and vegetables.”

Backyard farming has since gained greater importance as more people discovered that it was an excellent means of earning additional income to their regular salaries.

When a husband or wife goes to work in an office the spouse can engage in backyard farming at home not only to produce food for the family but also to generate some money. Some farming businesses don’t require a lot of space so long as there is sufficient water.

It is possible, for example, to keep a thousand or more layers and two or three Fresian cows on half an acre or less.

Mr Mischael Ssali is a veteran journalist and a farmer
[email protected]