Kayinja’s income has improved after combining journalism with farming

About a 100 metres off the Masaka-Bukakata Road in Bukakata Sub-county, Ssunga Village, is Edward Tomusange Kayinja’s farm, which sits on part of his 31 acres.
The broadcast journalist is busy watering his vegetables when the Seeds of Gold team arrives.
“For about 32 years, I fed people with information, but now I feed them food,” says Kayinja of his turnaround.
Inspiration  
Kayinja, a reporter in Masaka City, has been a journalist for 32 years and much as he enjoys doing his job he says there is another very important occupation that he also wants fellow journalists to take up. 
“The idea to begin farming has been in my mind for many years,” he told Seeds of Gold during a recent visit to his farm.

“A journalist should devise an alternative source of income, not only to supplement his income but also to cushion his retirement later on in old age, and in my view, the best additional occupation for the journalist is farming. I was a school teacher in my youthful days and I worked with Radio Uganda and Capital FM before joining CBS 24 years ago. I have been able to set up a home in Makindye Division on Salaama Road, in Kampala and another home in Kimaanya B Division in Masaka City, but despite those achievements that I have got from journalism, I find farming a very tempting source of additional income,” he says.

Mixed farming 
Of the 31 acres he owns at Ssunga Village he is so far doing farming on just about 15 acres. He grows tomatoes on about two acres, sweet potatoes on six acres, water melon on about an acre, cabbages on an acre, York yams on an acre, eggplant on an acre, green pepper on about an acre, and nakati on an acre. 
He also grows bananas and keeps poultry (about 1000 layers). At the time of writing this article he was doing ground preparation to plant Irish potatoes on some two acres.
He further said he was reserving the rest of the land for goat keeping. “Before going into goat keeping, however, I want to make a few visits to the farms of successful goat keepers to learn a few things,” he added.

Why livestock 
He says one of the reasons he wants to keep livestock is to get organic manure cheaply and to use it to increase crop production. “I use the chicken droppings as fertiliser on the vegetable gardens,” he said. 
“When the poultry manure is brought here we spread it out and dig it into the soil and I believe it is what keeps the cabbages and the other crops green. When I finally begin keeping goats I will also be applying their droppings on the crops,” he explains.
He is mostly growing vegetables and it is rather surprising that despite the devastating drought that has hit most of the Greater Masaka Region, his crops are all green and growing with vigour. 

What is his trick? 
“I have a powerful water pump and long tubes which I use to for irrigation. For someone like me with a water source nearby, growing vegetables in the dry season can be quite profitable because most of the other farmers are not able to grow such crops since there is no rain. Irrigation in the dry season makes it possible for me to produce crops that are scarce in the market. It is therefore easier to get customers for the crops,” says Kayinja.
He disclosed that already he has got traders who have booked his sweet potatoes. “They export the potatoes to Kenya and they keep asking me whether they are ready for harvest so that they may come for them.” 
Kayinja owns a grocery shop, on Villa Road in Nyendo-Senyange Division where the eggs from his poultry farm are sold at retail price.

Asked how he manages to be such an active journalist and a farmer, he replied: “It is all about determination and good time budgeting. Every day I have to file at least one story for CBS but at the same time I have to find time for the farm. Remember, to me, working on the farm is an opportunity for physical exercise. But I have also to check on what my labourers are doing. I don’t want to pay people without seeing what they are doing.”

What drove him into farming? 
He says one of the reasons he is calling upon fellow journalists to become farmers is drawn from the experience he went through following the sudden closure of CBS Radio in September, 2009, when he found himself without any income. “At first I thought it would be opened after a few days,” he narrated. “But weeks passed and it became clear we would be off the air for a very long time. That is when I decided to become a taxi driver using my car. I had to do so because I found myself without any food and no income at all. I remember what many fellow workers went through and it is mostly those that were into farming that managed to take the best care of their families during the entire thirteen months of the radio’s closure.”
He also said that the ongoing Covid-19 lockdowns have taught him the importance of farming. 
“So many people have left their homes in large towns and gone to rural areas where they still don’t know how to make ends meet,” he says.

Is farming really making good profits for him? 
“The truth is that it is just about two years ago that I set out to practise farming and I am making a few mistakes but this does not really stop me from going ahead with farming because every mistake made is a lesson learned. Most of the crops that I am growing take between three and four months to be ready for harvesting. I have a record of how much I invest with regard to inputs and wages. When I sell the commodities at a fair price I earn some profit. But we have to remember that in nearly all enterprises sometimes things don’t go the right way. The beauty with growing different crops on a farm is that if one crop fails another does well. Every now and again there is a crop to take to the market and we have eggs to sell every day.”

These days he drives a brand new Harrier car which could be one of the signs that he is making some money but he has a joke for anybody who compliments him about the car. He says he deserves to drive a large car since he is employed by the Kabaka, proprietor of Radio CBS.