From subsistence to profit: Making farming profitable

Having a social enterprise merged under an agribusiness concept not only yields results for the community but also makes business sense. 
Nurtured from a family dream of owning a farmyard, the farm started with six local chicken and has grown into a  group of three campuses. These are seated on a total of 174 acres of land in Wakiso, Isingiro and Luweero districts.

Gudula Naiga Basaza, the founder and managing director of Gudie Leisure Farm, decided to venture into the white meat value chain because of its timely results. 

“Youth don’t have a lot of time to wait so we ensure they profit in the first cohort.  If one has optimal numbers in poultry, they will make the profit in the first batch. You don’t have to do 20 batches to make profit. All the enterprises at the farm make money within less than six months,” Ms Basaza says. 

The animals include turkey, chicken, pigs, rabbits and fish.
The farm has supplemented urban farming of vegetables and herbs to its production system. Agro tourism is another component added to their catch to diversify in enriching ventures for community development.

In addition, the enterprises require small space to accommodate more youth that find space as a limitation most times. Using the aerial mode of farming, the stables are built in storied structures therefore animals are reared in a vertical space.

Besides the meat considered healthy, Basaza admits that the growing middle class prefers consuming white meat especially during celebrations. 

“We want to invest in the young people to reap from such a venture,” Ms Basaza says. 
Not only do they offer skills but go on to provide market to different products. 

Currently operating in 45 districts, Basaza conducts a market survey to tip off youth about the availability of the market. Basaza reckons that when the districts are circulated, they come to join the main market. In central, there are 600 youth engaged in roasting chicken, pork, fish and chicken on the roadside. 

As a resilience strategy, the farm has installed a frozen container capacitated at 40 tonnes of meat. This is meant to prepare for storage and sell excess meat from the districts. The Covid-19 crisis was a blessing in disguise.

 They revamped their transport system of bicycles and motorcycles to make deliveries of a variety of roasts and supplied vegetables to residents in the neighbourhood and greater Kampala.

Cost cutting has enabled them to maximise profits using a value chain linked system from the growth process to delivering to the final consumer. The farm makes and processes its own feeds.  The farm sells quality because every week we churn out 5,000 chicken. 

For pork, it varies but has an established market for 3,000 Kgs per month which they are not meeting. Most times, people prefer a hatchery of 24 rabbits than meat.  People are permitted to fish since fish can not be harvested on a timely basis.

For the last 10 years, the farm has reached 112,000 youth so far operating in 750 villages. The farm runs an incubation centre for white meat. Six youth are selected by local authorities from one particular village that represents a parish. Here, youth are classified in five different clusters depending on their interests.

 The white campus at Najjera in Wakiso District incubates the youth agropreneur producers. These undergo training to run animal businesses namely turkeys, chicken, fish, pigs and rabbits.

Also incubate the youth agropreneur feeders where they learn to make animal feeds done at the feed campus in Isingiro.

Another cluster incubated is youth agropreneur marketers who are responsible for looking for markets for produced feeds and meat. In addition, they have the responsibility of marketing the whole village.

 On top of connecting the entrepreneurs with the youth in school, they run the farmer service center and tourism element of the village. They are value chaine linked hence trained to be able to run a line of businesses. 

There are also youth agropreneur transporters who transport produce to different buyers. Youth agropreneur vendors add value to white meat on the roadside while youth agropreneur health promoters do not leave anything to go to waste. They ensure maintenance of one health concept in all their engagements in a zero waste environment, for instance, a carcass of any animal is left to rot to harbour maggots as feed.

“For all the incubation facilities, we are able to incubate 500 youth per cohort at a time. However, in most cases, “We go for 300 since these are not days for having full capacity. We have youth incubated for five weeks and producers for 16 weeks,” Ms Basaza says.       
        
Gudie Leisure Farm is currently worth Shs10 billion with the help of a loan of about Shs250 million shouldered by Microfinance Support Centre, a public finance institution. 

“When one is running a social entreprise, it is difficult to go for commercial loans, especially in terms of training young people to manage businesses. They are bound to make mistakes and losses, hence one can’t borrow commercial loans to be able to sustain that kind of business.  The institution monitors on a quarterly basis to interest themselves largely in our growth and not the money per se.”
Acquiring loans at an interest rate between 8 to 13 per cent, has taught Basaza how to manage money.
Challenges 
Running social enterprises has its challenges especially when the service offered is on high demand. To admit young people to undergo incubation, they usually don’t pay any money since most are unemployed. 

“But we front learning whether we incur losses or profits from their works,” Ms Basaza adds. 

“When we are incubating young people, we make sure conditions are optimal. We don’t want them to lack anything during incubation like those who handle birds, must receive 500 birds, feeds and all the vaccines and drugs on time. A lot of money gets locked into this. 

When you visit our farmer learning centre, we have locked a lot of money into products to make sure the youth don’t lack so that they can learn the right way of doing things.” 

To run the incubation comfortably, an average of Shs2 billion is required to ensure that every youth who comes has what to use.
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