Mbarara mixed farmer turns home into training centre

Friesian cows grazing from clean paddocked farms greet any traveller on the Mbarara-Ibanda Road. Mr Patrick Byaruhanga a prominent farmer owns one of them near Nyakisharara airstrip, eight kilometres from Mbarara town. Dairy cows stroll on the farm grazing on dry pasture. It is a dry season, the reason milk production at his farm has reduced by half. In Mr Byaruhanga’s compound is a big and spectacular incomplete house which he is constructing as a farmers’ training centre.Apart from diary, Byaruhanga has poultry, goat rearing and fruit growing enterprises.

It was a beehive of activity at his home when Daily Monitor visited him. Workers are engrossed in cleaning the kraal and pen. Others are delivering feeds to chicken and watering cows.“In the old days, people saw farming as an option for the failures and uneducated. Today that perception has changed, it’s a business. One can get a lot of income from farming than ordinary civil service jobs,” says Byaruhanga, a former Executive Officer at Mbarara Magistrate’s Court. Mr Byaruhanga, 58 retired from his job at 34 years in 1986 and went into fulltime farming. “I had a job in town, I have a house in Kakyeka Mbarara but I abandoned that comfort and I am here because I discovered there is a lot to gain from farming,” he says. The Managing Director Kamugasha Mixed Farm Ltd (as the farming business is called) Byaruhanga and his family reap big every month. “The least I can earn in a month is Shs1.5m,” he says.

Farmers’ training centre.
With all the agriculture enterprises in one homestead, Byaruhanga’s eyes are set on operationalising a farmers’ learning centre at his home. Homes of strong farmers in developed countries such as Germany act as farmer training centres.“We are constructing a training centre where farmers would be staying to learn about farming here and we intend to employ extension workers to train them,” he says, pointing at the building under construction. It is designed to accommodate 50 people with self-contained facilities, a conference hall, leisure facilities and a spacious compound.

The idea, he says, was mooted about 10 years ago when his home increasingly become a destination for adventurous farmers seeking exposure for best practices in farming, as well as government officials in restocking and the Naads programme. Internship students from agriculture institutions come to his farm to get practical farming experience. “Farmers from Mbarara and outside come here for learning and exposure. But they don’t stay,” he says. “I got the vision of building a farmers learning centre because people go to hotels like Lake View Resort to learn farming. They need a hands-on approach and I am giving this opportunity,” says Byaruhanga.

He said farmers will be paying affordable money depending on how long they will be staying. “I hope the centre will be complete by mid 2011,” he says. Byaruhanga is prominent locally, nationally and internationally. Currently he is the district Naads chairman. He has served at Mbarara District Farmers’ Association (Mbadifa) for five years as Publicity Secretary and as Vice Chairman for eight years.
Until 2005 when Mbarara District was split, Mbadifa had 10,000 members drawn from former counties-now districts; Isingiro, Ibanda and Kiruhura as well as Mbarara, focusing on farming improvement and product marketing. Byaruhanga has represented farmers at international conferences including last year in Netherlands and Germany.