A rural farmer here in Kamuli, in eastern Uganda. My own life has been a mess. But looking at people’s circumstances in my region as a whole, I have decided not to sit back.
I am also founder of the Uganda Community Farm (UCF), a nonprofit social enterprise that aims to put the rural poor in the remotest areas of eastern Uganda on a self-sustainable path from poverty.
David,
If there is anything you can do to help, it will be much appreciated.
Crypto is something I first engaged with (for the very first time) only months ago—after I had already posted on this forum seeking support (in vain).
I am not a crypto person, just trying to cling on it as a last resort after everything else had failed.
Michael, I can see, I misinterpreted your message. Still, by writing to me with those words, you are one of the people who gave me real hope (it is why I interpreted your message in an even bigger way).
Anthony
Titotal, thanks so much for this. I surely know you are one of the people who had my back in previous posts. Although I won’t dispute anyone’s views on crypto, I just wanted to point out that the crypto project in paricular that I mentioned (JellyJelly), and its founders, are indeed known in the west, even by mainstream media outlets.
Somewhere you said, “I have not heard of either of the people you claim are backing the project.”.
Sam Lessin is described in this Vox article, this Vice article, and in CNET, as being a former Facebook VP who was also a classmate of Zuckerberg (and that his father is the one who introduced Mark Zuckerberg to some Venture Capitalists in the early days of Facebook).
Sam Lessin, and his wife Jessica Lessin, are also the founders of the tech media outlet “The Information”, which (according to Google) is also called Lessin Media.
On the other hand, Iqram Magdon-Ismail is known by all US media outlets as being the co-founder of VENMO. This is mentioned by CNBC, also in Inc, and Entrepreneur Mag
Today, both Sam Lessin and Iqram’s twitter pages are only tweeting about one thing: JellyJelly, and their intended new social media app JellyJelly.com (please check their twitter pages).
So, although crypto is indeed like a casino, at least I would think putting $10,000 in a token whose founders have such a background, at a time when this token is at the very lowest price it has ever been at, isn’t a big risk—especially if I can’t find someone to directly give me the full GBP 339,000 or the $814,000 that is needed for our intended grain facility.
Although I am new to crypto, I can guarantee that putting $10,000 in JellyJelly now, at the very least, will result in $20,000 (in only weeks from today), which would still at least help our sorghum project alone, if it can’t do so with the grain facility.
Hi Nick,
I am very grateful to hear from you too, and thanks so much for this really encouraging message. True, I understand this post might surely attract some downvotes, or even some pushback especially on that part of crypto, but I have also gradually gotten used to this, so I will certainly take it easy.
I have only decided to turn to crypto as a way of raising money for our intended facility only as a last resort—because everything else didn’t work (and I wouldn’t like to give up). I also think the crypto token in particular that I had in mind at least has a solid background (given its founders and its intended use).
Okay Mathias.
Hi Roddy, I have edited my two recent replies for clarity.
To add to my previous message, Roddy (edited):
The reason Uganda Breweries is the only big buyer right now who is very willing to buy our farmers sorghum even without a plant, isn’t because Uganda Breweries cleans this sorghum themselves. It is because they work with a third party processor called GrainPulse who cleans this sorghum on behalf of UBL. Even the sorghum from our own project that we sell to UBL, GrainPulse is where we take it, from where it is then taken to UBL.
I can’t think of other institutional buyers of sorghum who are willing to accept us as a supplier under the same setup that we are working with UBL. This all leaves us with only one buyer.
The other thing is pricing. If GrainPulse was owned by our project, or if we had a grain cleaning facility like the one that Ruth (in Soroti) has, the price that Uganda Breweries pays for our farmers’ sorghum per kg would be higher than the Ugx1,300 − 1,500 that they are paying us now. Because that sorghum would be on a standard where it is ready for brewing.
The other thing is transport. If we have a grain cleaning facility of our own, with ample storage (e.g. a 1000 ton silo), some big buyers (like the WFP) who have their own transport may be able to come for our produce at our plant in Kamuli, saving us transport.
(I have edited this reply for clarity and to add a little context):
First, let’s assume sugarcane brings farmers more income than sorghum. Even then, diversifying with crops like sorghum is still very essential, because our region Busoga, presently, is known for only one thing (sugarcane), and is currently the biggest sugarcane producing region in Uganda.
Sugarcane has been blamed for severe hunger and malnutrition in our region. Sorghum on the other hand, can be eaten as food (unlike sugarcane), and being a drought-resistant crop, it is one of those crops that could contribute greatly to food security in a region like ours where droughts have become very frequent.
Moreover, a 2021 news report by Uganda’s The Independent said “for Busoga to get out of the current poverty cycle, there will be need to diversify and find new crops for farmers other than the whole region cultivating one perennial crop.” And since the main challenge rural farmers in our region face is the absence of reliable markets, a grain facility like the one we intend to install is the very kind of thing that would help these farmers diversify their crops/incomes.
Now the answers to the questions you asked, Roddy:
1). With a yield of around 40 tons/acre, even using the lowest price Ugx 60,000/ton would give an annual revenue of Ugx 2.4m/acre. For your estimates for sorghum of Ugx 1,300/kg and 700kg/acre with 2 harvests/year, that would only be Ugx 1.82m/acre. Is there some thing I’m missing?
Sugarcane takes two years to mature, and is harvested once in a 24-month cycle. During the same period, a sorghum farmer harvests four times. This way, sorghum may be a better choice.
The other thing with sugarcane is that it is almost exclusively bought by only one category of buyers (sugarcane millers). As a result, whenever it drops to the levels of Ugx 60,000 per ton, it isn’t just that farmers suffer a low price. It is that they also often have no buyers (due to oversupply), which is why they then resort to selling it as firewood, or for as little as Ugx 30,000 ($8) for a full Tata truck that has ~10 tons (as said in this facebook post).
By contrast, sorghum has a relatively wider market (all breweries; relief agencies, animal feed producers etc). The UN’s World Food Program alone, which is currently the biggest buyer of grains in Africa, sources sorghum and other crops from 15+ countries, including Uganda (see page 3 of this PDF) -- and buying from smallholder farmers is one of their priorities.
2). About the benefits of the facility versus the current setup of growing sorghum without a plant: do you have an estimate for how much sorghum Uganda Breweries and other companies would be willing to buy in the current setup? That is, how many farmers/acres could you support without the plant?
Uganda Breweries (UBL) has no limit on the number of farmers that they are willing to buy from (or the volume of sorghum they are willing to buy from them) without a plant. However, of all the institutional buyers of grains in Uganda today, UBL is probably the only buyer who is willing to buy our farmers’ sorghum under this setup.
Putting UBL aside, the other big buyers of grains in Uganda (and in Africa) are relief agencies like the WFP, GOAL, UNHCR, USAID, World Vision etc who provide emergency food assistance in refugee camps, hospitals, schools etc. However, because of things like aflatoxins (which are said to be present in 75% of Uganda’s grains), all of these agencies have strict guidelines for buying grains like maize and sorghum, and do not buy from food suppliers who do not have their own established postharvest handling and cleaning facilities.
But it isn’t just relief agencies. A few weeks ago, we contacted Nile Breweries to ask if they too could start buying our farmers sorghum, since Nile is located in our region of Busoga (in Jinja), yet UBL (our current buyer) is in Kampala. We haven’t received a final answer yet. However, when you do some research, the fact is: Nile, unlike UBL, requires their grain suppliers to have their own grain cleaning/storage facilities before they can supply them.
A farmer named Ruth from Soroti (in a distant part of eastern Uganda outside of Busoga) who currently owns a grain cleaning and storage facility that was also installed by Alvan Blanch, says in this news article that… “I told [Nile] if I could be one of their suppliers of white sorghum. They welcomed the idea [but] they told me I had to have a warehouse as well as a machine capable of cleaning the sorghum”.
This means: the only big buyer we can work with under our current setup is UBL and no one else. The other thing? Under this setup, expanding our sorghum project to reach a big number of farmers would be very hard, because even our capacity for handling their produce will be limited.
Above all, handling large volumes of sorghum without any postharvest systems is prone to aflatoxin contamination (a common reason for which Uganda’s grain produce is often rejected.
3). A separate question: could you give me an idea of what proportion of farmers in Busoga grow sugarcane versus being subsistence farmers?
First, the number of farmers here in Busoga who only own <3 acres of land are the majority, as The Monitor says here (subscription required). As such, smallholder farmers, who mostly engage in subsistence agriculture, also form the biggest number of sugarcane growers.
It is why Uganda’s president recently urged small farmers in Busoga to leave sugarcane, because they (small farmers) are the majority, and when people talk of sugarcane (and the misery it has unraveled) in Busoga, they are often referring to these rural smallholder farmers—although there is also a small number of farmers who own large pieces of land, and who are the ones who have at least managed to benefit from sugarcane growing.
Thanks so much for sharing this. I will keep an eye at CE, and their upcoming application cycle.
Hi Roddy, thanks very much too for this message. Here are my answers to these questions:
1). Currently, our farmers are within a radius of about 40km from the UCF, and because the volume of their sorghum is still a bit small, it’s the UCF team itself that gathers all these farmers’ sorghum using a motorbike, and brings it to the UCF, from where we take it to Kampala.
We also have a dump truck at the UCF, and whenever the load we are going to carry is a bit big, we use this truck instead. Right now, all these costs (fuel, transport etc) are covered by the UCF, using the money that we raise through small online donations. We don’t charge our farmers for transport. Also, until now, we been paying our farmers the full price per kg that our buyers pay—without deducting any of it, because our farmers’ volume of produce (and income levels) are still small.
However, once we install our intended grain facility, the number of farmers taking part in our project is going to increase. Also, the volume of sorghum that individual farmers produce will increase, because the presence of this facility will be an assurance to local farmers of the presence of a ready market. Meaning, the income levels of individual farmers will change too.
So, once this facility is installed, we plan to use one of these two approaches (or both) in gathering our farmers’ sorghum: a) ask each farmer to bring their sorghum to our facility, or b) deduct Ugx100 ($0.03) per kg from the price that our buyers in Kampala pay for sorghum, which is very negligible, because, this year for example, Uganda Breweries has bought our farmers sorghum at Ugx 1,300/kg. Deducting Ugx 100/kg would still leave a farmer with Ugx 1200/kg.
That way, 1000 tons (or 1 million kg) would give our facility an income of Ugx100,000,000 ($27,778) each season, which could be used to cover expenses for gathering our farmers’ sorghum and ferrying it to Kampala; pay staff salaries, electricity, equipment repair etc.
Transporting 1,000 tons to Kampala, using an ordinary FUSO truck of 15tons, would require 67 trips to Kampala, and a single trip costs Ugx 600,000, meaning, Ugx 40,200,000 (US$11,166) for the 1,000 tons. From the total income of $27,778, this would leave us with $16,611 each season, for staff salaries, electricity, equipment repair etc.
2) How long does the harvesting season last, and how many hours a day could the plant operate? I’m wondering what yearly capacity the 15 ton/hour capacity corresponds to.
The harvesting season lasts about 1.5 months (or 45 days). If the volume of our farmers’ sorghum is still small, the facility will only have one 8-hour shift a day, meaning 120tons cleaned per day, or 5,400tons in 45 days (i.e., once planting season), and therefore 10,800tons/year.
If the volume of our farmers’ sorghum becomes big, we will have two 8-hour shifts a day, meaning 240tons/day, or 10,800tons in 45 days, and therefore 21,600 tons/year.
Also note:
Besides sorghum, this facility will also clean/grade crops like maize, beans, rice, millet, peas etc, meaning, even in those times of the year when we are having no sorghum, this facility will still have another crop it’s working on, enabling local farmers to diversify their incomes.
Dear Roddy, thanks so much for this message. Although it has taken me long to write you back, I am really very thankful for your kind contribution to the UCF, and for the encouraging words you left on this post. I have also mentioned you in my new post that was published yesterday.
As for why we chose to have Alvan Blanch to install our intended grain facility, rather than say an Indian or Chinese firm, the reason is because most agro-processing plants that I know here in Uganda were installed by European companies. Those which have been installed by Indian and Chinese firms are those that mostly belong to Asian investors operating in Uganda/Africa.
But those owned by Ugandans/Africans, often use European firms. These include:
1) GrainPulse in Mukono (near Kampala). Their facility was installed by Alvan Blanch.
2). AgroWays, which has several plants in various parts of Uganda, some of their grain facilities and silos were installed by Cimbria, a Danish firm, and some by Alvan Blanch.
3). Acila Enterprises in Soroti (Uganda), their grain cleaning, drying and storage facility was installed by Alvan Blanch.
4) Totco Grain & Seeds, in Lira (northern Uganda), their grain facility was installed by Cimbria.
Hi Nick, I had no access to the internet the whole of yesterday, and it’s why I am only writing you back now. This is a good question that I think many people would be very curious to know. So, I am instead putting my answer in a separate post. I am going to share it with you once it’s ready. Thanks so much.
Thanks too Joseph, for appreciating this. Anthony.
Thanks so much titotal.
Hi Rupert, thanks so much for this.
The reason we want to incorporate animal agriculture in our operations, is simply to find a way of covering our overheads in a self-sufficient way. Because short of this, it would be very hard for us to meet our operating costs especially with our new goal of expanding our sorghum work.
But, as a person, I am really very conscious about animals rights, and I am very conscious about organic/permaculture farming systems, and it is why, on our page “12% for 100% ADMIN self-sufficiency”… I even pointed out that: “unlike those chicken that are kept under factory farming systems (like battery cage), free-range chicken are very cheap to feed, and to take care of.”
On that page, you can see that my goal is to try and make our 12-acres as natural as possible, including the growing of crops like red pepper for use in making organic pesticides.
If we manage to raise the needed $99,680 for transforming our 12 acres, I would love to invite you to visit the UCF, when we have initiated our intended chicken forest too, just to share ideas. In fact, we really need people’s ideas, and we need friends from anywhere in the world who can visit us anytime, on this journey.
Hi Sean, thanks so much for this really insightful message, and the things you have pointed out.
I just want to note two things:
1). Although I am now asking EA to help the UCF raise support, my original EA critique (which I made two years ago) was aimed at getting EA to change the way they work with the extreme poor and their local grassroots orgs in the global south as a whole, not just my own organization (the UCF).
2). As regards my own work at the UCF, a few people from The Life You Can Save, one of the EA charity evaluators, physically visited us in Namisita (Kamuli) in 2023, and even toured some sorghum fields of the local farmers that the UCF works with.
I believe their motivation to visit us was my EA critique, because their proposal to visit didn’t come from me. It came from them. Here are a few photos from that visit (I am the one putting on a black cap in those photos):
https://www.ugandafarm.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/DSC07941.jpg
https://www.ugandafarm.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/DSC07951.jpg
https://www.ugandafarm.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/DSC07943.jpg
https://www.ugandafarm.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/DSC07945.jpg
FYI, titotal:
Iqram and Lessin are also giving regular interviews, and are making weekly twitter spaces about their new social media app JellyJelly:
https://x.com/iqramband/status/1900274440199692779
Not to justify anything, but just to let you know this. Also, they are not merely “backers”. They are the project’s founders.