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| Preparing for the second planting season, agro-inputs bought include Organic Fertilizers (in sac), FERTISOL imported from the Netherlands to Uganda; pesticide for soaking maize seeds before planting (in bottle) Black Off fertilizer and pesticide; Maize seeds - hybrid maize seeds from Syova Seeds (formerly East African Seeds). |
By July, we started land preparation by slashing the part where the bananas and coffee are still very young. With our field supporting staff and my family members, we agreed on the enterprises we should major on during this season. We also agreed on the variety of crops we should plant and whether we need to hire more land or stick on our own. what kind of fertilizers we should apply and how many casual workers we need on farm during the second season. The following were some of the choices we made.
Land Preparation: At our farm, we use integrated model where we do our best not to use agrochemicals until we can't avoid it. We are not certified organically and neither do we use agrochemicals (pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers e.t.c.). This choice is hard to manage a farm in Uganda without using herbicides since the manual labor is scarce and everyone in the neighborhood is seriously fumigating their land against weeds, pests and any simple injuries. We tried to apply herbicides (sorry to mention this brand: Weedmaster) but the section where we applied it to has never recovered. The owner the land told us that it was the first time to apply an agrochemical to her land and she had thought that we would maintain natural way of managing the land to maintain fertility. After observing the effect of the herbicide, we agreed to slash and do hoe digging and removing weeds by hand. This decision comes with a lot of expenses to acquire persons to do this work especially during rainy seasons. It also takes a lot of time for people to complete simple tasks which one person would have done by spraying. For this season, we did land preparation by slashing and young women used hoes to fine tune the soils.
Enterprise selection: We decided to concentrate on few crops for this season as we learned that having many does not help but it adds more work load. However, we are setting up a forest garden farm where intercropping is a must and we do not do any monoculture as it is not good for soil conservation. I sound more organic! Anyway, we chose to grow maize, cassava, coffee and complete the section of bananas. We also agreed to do it in line to facilitate the process of fertilizer and pesticide application.
Land Marking: With two boys, we made land marking whereby we are planting crops in between the young bananas. There is a common believe locally that you cannot intercrop young bananas with maize. However, I noted that this can be dealt with since the flowers of maize are the problem, you can put the line of maize at 1 meter from the banana hole. Our bananas were spaced at 3m by 3m (around 10ft by 10ft). We left one meter off but in between plants and added two holes of coffee and in between was a hole of cassava. Between the rows of bananas, we also left one meter off the bananas and put a line of cassava on one end and another line from the other end. Then in between, we put 3 holes of maize at 2 feet by 2 feet spacing. I had preferred four holes but this time I learned to listen to my field supporting team. I also learned that we were both correct. If we decided to go by 2 feet by 2.5 feet, we would use 2 seeds per hole but if we did one feet by one feet spacing for maize, we would use one seed per hole. However, we needed to decide on what comes first, the hole for coffee or maize of cassava. Lucky enough the holes for bananas were dung last season. It was a puzzle but we finally accepted to start with coffee, then cassava and lastly maize.
Maize Seeds, Cassava cuttings and Coffee seedlings: We are lucky that we found good cassava on the farm land we bought so we have enough cuttings for the cassava. We also tested it with the market and we got positive results thus no need to change. Coffee seedlings was also had to decide on whether we should use the local variety we found on the farm or use the improved varieties as promoted by the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) who certify nursery bed operators to supply coffee seedlings. We visited some farms and noted a common a challenge of the improved varieties that they easily dry off especially in the neighboring areas where we farm. We agreed to use local robusta coffee varieties. For maize seeds, we tried to get price information from NASECO Seeds about Bazooka maize variety but the seeds were not available, this was the same thing for DK 777 an imported variety from Kenya by Faith Agro Input and then we went to Syova Seeds, formerly called East African Seeds and we learned of a variety of KH 500 which is resistant to ear rot. We faced this challenge when we used Naseco Long 10H and DT MAX maize variety. We got estimations that DK 777 was around 43,000 Ugx per 2 kilogram pack on retail at Container Village; Bazooka is likely to be at 8,500Ugx for one kilogram from Naseco stores and KH 500 is at 19,000Ugx for 2kg pack. Something very interesting, as thought of waiting for DK 777 and DK 90-89, I saw the packaging branded "Monsanto". That was the end of my search on this variety even though everyone in the country is praising it. I will reserve my debate on Monsanto products for the time being.
Fertilizers: We made phone call to another imported organic fertilizer supplier, FertiPlus from the Netherlands. However, we are ever getting the same report as other years. It is never in the country at the time of planting. The gentleman always gives some days or weeks when they are expecting it to be shipped in the country. We had the option of going back to Marula Proteen but we had one challenge with their fertilizer that it is packed in 50Kg sacs and a bit lose which makes it hard to transport using public transport means (taxi/matatu). We opted for packages of 25Kg that are manageable during the transportation. We resorted to FertiSol another importer of the Netherlands organic fertilizer which is form of pellets. We used this fertilizer at planting maize and we didn't regret. The 25Kg used to be at 80,000Ugx but it increased now by 85,000Ugx almost the same range as FertiPlus. Marula is cheaper, a sac of 50Kg can be got at 49,000Ugx due to the fact that it is locally made and more effective.
Pesticides: The organic foliar pesticides, we are likely to use BlackOff once again for maize. However, for bananas and coffee, we will use Bekana organic products. They are both good but seem to respond differently depending on the crop. The liter is about 20,000 to 25,000Ugx for both brands. The advantage of Bekana organic pesticide is that you can apply it at any time whereas Blackoff is recommended to apply after 3pm in the evening. Unfortunately, this is a time when we are normally packing to return home. I am sometimes forced to stay to supervise the process.
Other inputs for maize enterprise will include labor for weeding about twice in the season; harvesting; transportation; packaging and storing. We plan to use PicsBags to store our maize. We still have harvests of 2023 of maize that we stored in Picsbags and it is still in good conditions without pests. It goes around 8,000Ugx at Bukoola in Container Village.
In conclusion, we estimated about 1,140,000Ugx to invest in season for developing the coffee, cassava and maize enterprises. We will share the details at the end of each crop harvest. For maize, we need about 3 to 4 months to make sales; cassava may take 9 to 11 months and coffee needs some 2 years due to the variety we selected. I look forward to hearing from you on how you have prepared for the coming season or if you have any questions on item I have mentioned above. Kindly post in the comment box. Chao!
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