Calling all possibilists: everyone who
believes a better world is possible!
If you are reading this and are a possibilist, this message is for you:
Come work directly with us on the ground here in Kamuli, eastern Uganda, to install one practical solution to poverty — a grain cleaning, drying and storage facility.
We will remember you in 2030 as the person who helped us build a path from poverty!
Our region Busoga currently has the most talked about levels of poverty in Uganda.
Being a farming community, though, reliable markets and improved postharvest systems is all that the poorest households need to get on a self-sustainable path from poverty.
Poor postharvest handling, in particular, is said to cause food losses of nearly HALF of farmers’ produce here in Busoga, especially grains, before you even factor in markets.
The sugarcane trap:
Currently, the only crop that has a relatively ready market in our region is sugarcane. For this reason, nearly every household here grows sugarcane. And today, Busoga is “the biggest sugarcane producing sub-region” in Uganda, as mentioned in this article.
The most immediate result has been a) increased hunger (1, 2, 3), because every household is growing sugarcane, yet sugarcane can’t be eaten as food, b) increased poverty, both due to monoculture and the fact that sugarcane takes 2 years to mature.
Help us change this:
We are inviting every possibilist on earth who is reading this to come work directly with us on the ground here in Kamuli to install a grain cleaning, drying and storage facility that will help stop postharvest losses and create new market linkages for rural farmers.
This facility will link the poorest rural farmers in our region with buyers like Breweries, as well as international relief agencies like the UN’s WFP (currently the biggest buyer of grains in Africa), UNHCR, World Vision, GOAL, Red Cross, among others. And since all the crops this facility will get farmers to grow on a large scale (sorghum, maize, millet, rice, beans) are food crops, it will also improve food security, undoing sugarcane’s ills.
Current work:
Our nonprofit, the Uganda Community Farm (UCF), itself started by another rural farmer, is running a sorghum project where we provide rural farmers in our region with training and initial inputs (seed, tarps, spray pumps etc), as seen in the photos below.
But building reliable market linkages for our produce is the only thing that will give these farmers a steady income stream, and thus the ability to use their own resources to secure the needed inputs on their own, placing them on a self-sustainable path from poverty. This is where the grain facility we are asking you to help us install will help.
With this facility in place, we will initially expand our current sorghum project to cover every village in Kamuli and Buyende districts, which together comprise 1,123 villages with 202,000 households and nearly a million people. We will then gradually expand our work to cover the whole of Busoga, a region with 700,000+ households and 4m people.
Co-implementation:
As a possibilist working with us in person, we want to directly handle every penny we raise for this facility — pay for equipment, technical personnel, and account for every penny spent at every step — together with you until it’s complete. This means the poor in our region get to have a glimmer of hope, while you get to see how you’ve helped.
To be a possibilist working directly with us on the ground, email us or see your roles!
Cost:
This facility will be installed by UK firm Alvan Blanch at a total cost of $814,000. This money includes plant equipment, sitework, and third party services such as warehouse construction. With this money, however, our facility will only have one silo of 1000 tons.
To make our facility look exactly like the one above, with two silos of 1,000 tons each and one 500 ton silo, we will need $200,000 more, bringing the total to $1,014,000. Though this is big money, the scale of poverty in our region, and the number of farmers this facility will move from poverty once it’s complete, will be worth it. Help us do it!
If and only if:
If we can find enough possibilists to give us a push, we will instead replicate a 6,000 metric ton grain processing facility (with 3 silos of 2,000 tons each) that was installed in western Uganda, in a place called Kigumba, by Danish agri-tech firm Cimbria (video).
Both Alvan Blanch and Cimbria are established European makers of agro-processing equipment (both have installed facilities elsewhere in Uganda and across Africa), but Cimbria is known for building premium grain processing lines with the most advanced, AI-powered optical sorting, and equipment that adheres to the most strict EU standards.
Still, either (of them) will be a big lifting from the unending grip of poverty in our region.
Let’s get this facility installed — in 4 ways:
1). If you are a possibilist who is ready to work with us here in Kamuli to install this facility, you can either come with your contribution in person, so we can allocate it together with you, or you can contribute using any of the methods in #3 and #4 below.
2). If you are a possibilist who is ready to help, but won’t be able to work with us in person, you can either make a contribution via any of the methods in #3 and #4, or pay our equipment suppliers directly so they can simply come and install this facility for us!
If you choose the latter, please first let us know so we can guide you on where to pay.
3). Contribute via DonorBox, or create a fundraiser on our behalf by tapping “I want to fundraise for this”. We’ll update our DonorBox page daily, adding all offline contributions received via bank; employee workplace giving, and those paying for equipment directly.
4). Make a bank transfer, or support us via employee workplace giving where your contribution will be matched by your employer. In both cases, use the details here.
Again, we will remember you in 2030 as the person who gave us a push from poverty!
Photos:
Below are 42 photos from the work the UCF is currently doing with rural farmers in our region — providing them with training and free inputs, only as a hand-up. But true self-sustainability will only come from access to reliable markets. This is where you come in.
