Help us cover a region the size of Long Island (New York), with white sorghum.
Hi everyone.
My name is Anthony, a farmer here in eastern Uganda. 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.
As we begin 2024, I am asking you to help the UCF expand our white sorghum project to cover every village in our two neighboring districts of Kamuli & Buyende, in eastern Uganda, which together comprise 1,123 villages with a total area of 3,300 sq km — the size of Long Island — and are home to over a million people, and 165,000 households.
A little about me personally:
A few years ago, my own life was a total mess. But looking at the grip of poverty where I live, I decided not to sit back. My region Busoga, in eastern Uganda, which itself spans 10,318 sq km (about the size of the west African country Gambia), with over 4 million people, is Uganda’s most impoverished.
Busoga altogether comprises 11 mostly rural districts. Our 2 twin districts Kamuli & Buyende are part of those eleven. And being the furthermost, remotest area of Busoga on the shores of Lake Kyoga, Kamuli & Buyende have the least economic activity, and are arguably Busoga’s most destitute. The level of poverty here is simply insane, yet Busoga as a whole is already a dreaded place (poverty-wise).
A quick look at poverty in Africa:
Before COVID came, the World Bank said (in 2019), that 70% of the extreme poor in Sub Saharan Africa were packed in only 10 countries. Uganda was among those ten countries. Even among those 10 countries, according to the World Bank, Uganda still had the sluggishiest (i.e., the slowest) poverty reduction rate overall, as illustrated here.
A quick look at poverty in Uganda:
Until a decade ago, northern Uganda was Uganda’s most impoverished region. Back then, Karamoja, itself a sub-region of northern Uganda, was considered the poorest not just in northern Uganda, but in Uganda as a whole. But things have since changed.
The Uganda government’s own official statistics agency — the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) — writes in this 2019 report that: “the poorest region in the country had always been the northern region until 2013, but it is now the eastern region”.
Our region Busoga meanwhile, which has long been the poorest in eastern Uganda, has since 2017 doubled as the poorest not just in eastern Uganda, but in Uganda as a whole. In 2023, The Monitor, a Ugandan local daily, said: “Busoga is the sub-region with most people living in a complete poverty cycle followed by Bukedea and Karamoja. This is according to findings released in 2021/2022 by Mr Vincent Fred Senono, the Principal Statistician and head of analysis at the Uganda National Bureau of Statistics“.
The 2016/2017 National Household Survey (by UBOS) also said the same. In short, while Uganda as a country is the very last in Sub Saharan Africa when it comes to poverty reduction, our region Busoga is the worst in Uganda, and even in Busoga, our 2 twin districts Kamuli & Buyende, being the remotest, are simply the most miserable.
A few stats:
According to UBOS, Busoga’s poverty rate is 14% as a share of national poverty — the largest of any other region. But inside of Busoga itself, our poverty rate is 74.8%. And as someone who lives here, I am tempted to say, if you factored out Busoga’s urban places like Jinja and others, the poverty rate in individual remote rural communities like in Kamuli & Buyende, is well in the 90%+. Because the poverty here is simply insane.
Even back in 2016 when Karamoja was still the poorest SUB-REGION in Uganda (before Busoga overtook it), most people in Uganda had already given Busoga all sorts of nicknames because of the poverty here. The New Vision, Uganda’s government newspaper, writes in one 2016 article that “…no place has received more bashing for its poverty than the sub-region of Busoga. Some have dubbed it the capital of poverty”.
It is also worth noting that, even at national level, 60% of working Ugandans who are privileged to have a monthly salary, only earn a measly Ugx 200,000 ($54) monthly, or < $1.9/day, according to a 2022 a report by NTV. But in Kamuli & Buyende, and across Busoga, most rural households simply have no access to mainstream employment.
People’s livelihoods:
Nearly every household in our region is a rural smallholder farmer. And every rural smallholder farmer here lives in extreme poverty. But the biggest challenge every rural smallholder farmer here faces, is the absence of reliable markets for our produce.
Currently, the only crop that has a ready market across Busoga, is sugarcane. Accordingly, nearly every household here grows sugarcane. And today, Busoga is “the biggest sugarcane producing sub-region” in Uganda, as highlighted here in 2024.
The most immediate result has been threefold: 1) increased hunger (as said here and here), because every household is growing sugarcane, yet sugarcane can’t be eaten as food 2). increased poverty, because sugarcane takes two years to mature and 3) even when the sugarcane finally matures, there are times when prices fall to the extent that a farmer literally earns nothing, because every farmer is growing the same crop.
Feeling the PINCH of monoculture:
Between 2020 and 2022, due to monoculture/oversupply, and a permit policy that effectively stopped farmers from supplying their cane to millers directly, most sugarcane buyers had started buying “per field” i.e., per acre (as one farmer says here), not per ton, and were paying farmers as little as Ugx 50,000 ($14) for a full acre that has about 40 tons. Others were paying farmers as little as Ugx 30,000 (or $8) for a full Tata truck that has 10 tons, as the Jinja City tourist information center says in this facebook post.
In turn, farmers lost hope and cut down their sugarcane plantations en masse. Other farmers started selling it as firewood, as Jinja City highlights in another facebook post. As a result, sugarcane became very scarce across Busoga in 2022 and 2023, and it is the only reason sugarcane prices have now gone back to the current Ugx 175,000 per ton as of 2024, which is also only temporary, and which is already dropping even now.
In short, sugarcane — the only crop that currently has a ready market — has its own troubles, and to some people here in Busoga, sugarcane is the new jiggers that were the talk in every part of Busoga (even as recently as 2022), and whose cause is ultra poverty. Most importantly, only those farmers with big swaths of land are the ones who have benefited from sugarcane, yet most farmers in our region have less than 3 acres.
The REAL problem though isn’t sugarcane:
The real problem remains the fact that farmers here simply have no markets for their produce, and it is why every farmer has chosen to grow the only crop (sugarcane) that has a relatively ready market — which crop also exacerbates hunger because it can’t be eaten as food, yet every farmer is growing the same, and b) is almost exclusively bought by only one type of buyers: sugarcane millers, leaving the poor with no choices.
With all of this in mind:
I have spent the last 8 years trying to find support for an INTEGRATED agro-processing plant that would create new market linkages for at least six different types of crops — and thus enable the rural poor in our region diversify their incomes and escape poverty.
Our intended plant, if installed, will not only help place the rural poor in our region on a self-sustainable path from poverty — by creating reliable market linkages for various crops, minimizing post-harvest food losses, and creating new jobs — but also, since all the crops that this plant will be getting local farmers to grow on a large scale (cassava, sorghum, maize, pineapples, mangoes, passion fruits etc) are food crops, this plant will even contribute significantly to food security in our region of Busoga, Uganda’s poorest.
For now, though, we are only yet to raise support for our intended integrated plant, but are working on it. Incidentally, 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.”
White sorghum:
Since 2019, the UCF has had a project that trains rural farmers in Kamuli & Buyende on white sorghum; provides initial inputs (seed, tarpaulins, fertilizers, spray pumps etc only as a hand-up), then we build market linkages for our sorghum. White sorghum is also one of the 6+ crops that our intended integrated plant, if established, will work on.
Unlike sugarcane, which is almost exclusively bought by only one categories of buyers (sugarcane millers), white sorghum is one of those crops that have a diversified market. From international charities like World Vision, GOAL and the UN’s WFP that provide relief aid, to all the major breweries in East Africa. Currently, WFP is the biggest buyer of grains in Africa, including in Uganda — and sorghum is one of the grains they buy.
Incidentally, Uganda’s two biggest breweries (Uganda Breweries and Nile Breweries), nearly 100% of the white sorghum that they use in making beer comes from local farmers in Uganda. Of the two, Nile Breweries is even located here in Busoga (in Jinja), but until now, none of the two breweries, including NIle which is based here, has been buying white sorghum from any farmer in Kamuli & Buyende, or anywhere in Busoga. Why? Farmers in Kamuli & Buyende, and Busoga as a whole, haven’t been growing white sorghum. Its cultivation is being promoted for the first time by the UCF, and good enough, both breweries are very ready to buy our farmers’ sorghum (as detailed below).
Our sorghum project was disrupted by covid (in 2020 and 2021) when it was still in its infancy, but our work is now back on track; our farmers have become more interested in growing white sorghum — each farmer is recruiting a few other farmers — and our goal right now is to cover every village in Kamuli & Buyende, a region the size of Long Island. Here are a few of those farmers who have taken part in this project thus far:
White sorghum and climate resilience:
Putting aside the absence of reliable markets for our produce, east Africa as a region has had some really crippling droughts over the recent past, and in Uganda, northern Uganda, and our region eastern Uganda, have been the worst hit. Luckily, white sorghum is one of the most drought-resistant, high-yielding crops there is, which makes it a good candidate for moving the rural poor in a place like ours from chronic poverty.
Market for our farmers’ sorghum:
Currently, our farmers’ sorghum is bought by Uganda Breweries. We are also already in talks with Nile Breweries about the same. Both Uganda Breweries and Nile Breweries are Uganda’s biggest brewers. In October and December 2023, two other big buyers of white sorghum (Agroways Uganda & Vermipro) also contacted us here and here, asking us to start supplying them. We will engage even more bigger buyers as we move along.
Today, UBL sources 95% of their raw materials locally, including white sorghum, and is aiming to make it 100% by 2030. For Nile, that figure is currently 70%, but is also “aiming for over 95 percent in the near future”, per this World Bank report. UBL alone currently works with 35,000 farmers across Uganda, and is aiming for 50,000 farmers.
With white sorghum, however, both breweries have until now been sourcing all their sorghum from northern Uganda and elsewhere in eastern Uganda (outside Busoga), yet Nile Breweries in particular is located in Busoga. This is the market we want to tap into, besides all the other buyers, to move the ultra poor from our region in extreme poverty.
Help us cover a region the size of Long Island:
To expand our sorghum work to cover every village in our two twin districts of Kamuli and Buyende, a region the size of Long Island, all that we need is the postharvest handling and storage capabilities to manage our farmers’ produce on such a scale.
With the aid of our 2 local radio stations in Kamuli (Ssebo FM and KBS FM), getting rural farmers in every village in Kamuli & Buyende to start growing white sorghum is as very easy. But, if every farmer were to grow sorghum right now, our biggest challenge would be postharvest handling of this sorghum, before ferrying it to prospective buyers.
So, to get our sorghum work in every village in Kamuli & Buyende, all we are asking of you is to help us install a grain cleaning, drying and storage facility that will enhance our capacity to handle our farmers’ produce, while linking us to many other big buyers.
Having this facility isn’t simply about convenience. It is a market necessity:
In poor countries like ours, most food loss occurs at harvest, due to poor postharvest systems. But putting aside the income that is lost, poor postharvest systems are also said to be the leading cause of aflatoxin contamination especially in grains, with 75% of Uganda’s grains said to be contaminated with aflatoxins, as the Monitor points out here.
Aflatoxin contamination in food has been blamed for things like cancer, and there are cases where Uganda’s grain produce has been rejected, and even destroyed, due to aflatoxins. “At high doses, aflatoxins can kill, while at chronic exposure, they impact human health, suppressing immune systems, hindering child growth, and even causing liver cancer. They are also highly toxic to livestock and poultry”, says The Monitor.
Accordingly, most savvy buyers, e.g. the WFP (the biggest buyer of grains in Africa), have strict guidelines for buying grains like maize & sorghum, and generally do not buy from suppliers who do not have established postharvest handling and cleaning facilities.
Poverty-wise, this facility will help as follows:
1) This facility will make many big buyers (all breweries, relief agencies etc) to view us as strategic partners, enabling our target farmers to earn better prices for their produce, and thus placing them on a self-sustainable path from poverty. Additionally, this facility will create markets not just for sorghum, but also for crops like maize, millet, beans etc.
2) This facility will enhance our post-harvest handling capacity, enabling us to keep our farmer’s sorghum in storage for any duration, and only sell it off when prices are a bit more favorable, as opposed to selling it off immediately after harvest, as we do now.
3) Currently, the UCF provides all our farmers with free initial inputs, because many can’t afford them. This facility will change this by enabling our farmers to get higher prices, which will then give them the self-urge to produce more, and in turn, the ability to use their own incomes to secure the needed inputs, making our work self-sustaining.
4) The presence of this facility will also in itself be an assurance to all local farmers of the presence of a ready market (including those farmers whom the UCF hasn’t been supporting directly), giving them the self-urge to secure the needed inputs on their own — catalyzing our goal of covering every village in Kamuli/Buyende with white sorghum.
Help us get this facility installed:
This facility will be installed by British firm Alvan Blanch, at a cost of £339,403 (note, though, this money excludes many other implied installation costs). How you can help:
a) If you have the wherewithal to pay off this entire cost on our behalf, we can’t thank you enough. You can do so by sending this money directly to Alvan Blanch, so they can simply come to the UCF and install this facility. Our contact people at Alvan Blanch (who prepared the above quote) are Ivan Erimu, James Shaw and Christabel Blanch.
b) Create a GoFundMe on our behalf, to enable us raise support for this facility.
c) You can also help us raise part of the needed support by chipping in via any of the ways on this page. Help us put the ultra poor in Uganda’s most impoverished region on a self-sustainable path from chronic poverty. Your support shall be much appreciated.