Grace Dumba (right) demonstrates to fellow farmers how to plant caliandra seeds in one of the group’s demonstration gardens. PHOTO/ MICHAEL J SSALI
It is folly to milk a cow without feeding it. Wise farmers believe in feeding the cow well in order to get sufficient milk from it. Charles Katamba, the executive director of SAWA Agricultural Development Company Limited (SADCL), a value addition company, believes in empowering the farmers with farming skills in order to produce quality crops which his company buys and improves through value addition before marketing them.
Climate resilient crop varieties
Charles, a trained agriculturist, works with a team of experts and stakeholder to introduce climate resilient crop varieties that are nutritious and high yielding to the farmers to grow and sell to his company. Working in partnership with the National Agricultural Research Organisation (Naro), Harvest-plus, International Centre for Agriculture, Agro-input dealers, and district production departments, his company regularly meets with farmers groups to teach them good agronomy practices, post-harvest crop handling, making community seed banks, pests control methods, and the advantages of using improved seeds and fertilizer application.
“We are mandated to work all over Uganda but so far, we work among farmers in the central region and south western Uganda,” Katamba says.
“We particularly have to coordinate our activities with district production departments because we sincerely support what they do and through them, we gain access to more farmers so as to buy more crops ince the farmers employed by the company cannot provide the volumes that we need.”
Demonstration gardens
The company has 27 demonstration gardens managed by farmers groups in the Masaka Sub-region alone, where the farmers regularly gather to learn about new crop production practices, climate change mitigation, agro-ecology, improved crops, how to apply soil fertilisers and related advantages.
Besides teaching farmers better methods of crop production and climate smart agronomy technologies, SADCL plays another role --- addressing malnutrition, which, according to Unicef, threatens to destroy a generation of children in Uganda. More than one third of all children in Uganda (2.4 million) are stunted. One of the major causes of malnutrition is reduced dietary intake, or limited access to nutritious foods.
Undernutrition costs Uganda Shs1.8 trillion annually, which is an equivalent to 5.6 percent of our GDP, according to Unicef.
Harvest-Plus, one of the partners working with SADCL, is a global anti-hunger organisation that works to reduce under nutrition or ‘hidden hunger’, which it refers to as a form of malnutrition caused by lack of micronutrients in the food eaten by most
poor people.
They eat staple foods such as potatoes, bananas, or cassava that quickly fill their stomachs, yet they continue to suffer from malnutrition or “hidden hunger”, as these food crops do not have the vital nutrients such as iron, zinc, and vitamin A that the World Health Organisation (WHO) categorises as the most essential nutrients for healthy living.
Stephen Matovu (left) demonstrates to fellow farmers how the PICS bag works. PHOTO/ MICHAEL J SSALI
As the population keeps getting bigger over the years, there is less farming space, agricultural production is constrained and food prices rise, leading to nutrition related health problems.
Malnutrition results in frequent hospital visits, high medical expenses, and absence from work places due to sickness or attending to sick relatives and friends or going to burials of people killed by malnutrition-related illnesses.
Products
Some of the products produced by SADCL are pre-cooked bean f lour, which is rich in iron and zinc, and maize flour that is enhanced with Vitamin A. Pre-cooked bean flour is a solution to one big challenge that has always been faced by many poor households.
They may want to eat beans but since they take a lot of fuel to cook, most people don’t have the money to pay for charcoal or firewood to prepare a meal that includes beans. Yet beans are an important source of protein which, due to poverty, a poor family misses and ends up with undernourished children. SADCL cooks the iron and zinc biofortified beans, dries them and crushes them into flour, which is packaged in packs of 250 grammes or more and sold in shops.
Since the beans are already cooked the flour made out of them takes a maximum of just 10 minutes to prepare for eating. This makes it easy for low income families with fuel issues to cook and to curb under-nutrition.
When
Seeds of Gold met with the team, the company was having a farmers’ field day at Kyamuyimbwa Village, Kabonera Sub-division, Masaka City. Through regular farm field visits in collaboration with other partners and stakeholders, Katamba ensures the crops are well grown and properly handled by the farmers since food crops must be hygienically produced and made fit for human consumption.
SADCL, working with Naro, also assists farmers to produce good quality grain seeds, which the company buys for sale to other farmers.
Safe crop storage
The farmers’field day at Kyamuyimbwa included a demonstration of how grain can be safely stored without using pesticides.
Stephen Matovu, a prominent farmer in Kimaanya-Kabonera Division, demonstrated to fellow farmers how to preserve dry beans in a PICS bag.
The bags, commonly sold in farmers’ shops, make it impossible for pests to get oxygen once the beans or any other grains are inside the tightly tied bag, which preserves them for long periods without any recourse to pesticides.
David Kakeeto Kamya of KAMM Farmers Services, an agro-inputs company in Masaka, took the farmers through the safe application of agricultural chemicals in crop production. He emphasised the importance of keeping the chemicals out of the reach of children and not storing the chemicals where harvested food
crops are kept.
Recycling plastic
George Kato, a senior agricultural extension officer, Kimaanya-Kabonera Division, Masaka City, spoke to the farmers about plastic container disposal.
“Collect them, wash them twice, and make holes in them so that fraudsters don’t use them to package fake agro-chemicals,” he told the farmers.
“Then give me a phone call to link you to Trash Relief Uganda, which buys them for processing and reuse,” Kato also coordinates and oversees the distribution and use of genuine agricultural inputs by the farmers in the division.
Charles Katamba Katabalwa (left in yellow) Chief Executive Officer of SADCL explains to farmers a point about storing bean seeds in cocked bottles. PHOTO MICHAEL J SSALI
Joseph Mbibasa of Masaka District
Farmers Association (MADFA) talked to the farmers about agroforestry as one of the means of mitigating climate change effects. Agro-forestry is the practice of growing trees together with crops. He also distributed tree seedlings to the farmers to take home and plant. “You don’t necessarily have to wait to be given tree seedlings in order to grow trees,” he told the farmers.
“There are so many native tree seeds hidden under the ground nearly everywhere. If you want to prove what I am telling you, just stop cultivating and planting crops in any given space.
After a year or two, that space will turn into a solid bush complete with trees growing right there when nobody actually planted them.”
Ms Grace Dumba, a farmer group coordinator, who also oversees a SADCL demonstration garden at Kyamuyimbwa, took the farmers through the preparation of bean flour sauce. Some of the members had a taste of the sauce.
She later demonstrated planting of Caliandra, a fodder shrub around a garden of crops.
Besides being a fodder shrub, Caliandra is also a nitrogen fixing agent, which is good for the soil.
She also talked to the farmers about the advantages of planting beans in lines.
