Health worker finds money in farming

Sep 23, 2009

KELLEN Kaboine, a health worker in her late 50s, bends over avocado seedlings as she tends to one of her nursery beds. It has become her life dedication. Although she started planting trees and different fruits way back in 1998 when she first planted a 10

By Stephen Nuwagira

KELLEN Kaboine, a health worker in her late 50s, bends over avocado seedlings as she tends to one of her nursery beds. It has become her life dedication.

Although she started planting trees and different fruits way back in 1998 when she first planted a 10-acre of land with eucalyptus trees, Kaboine says: “We started when we were poor as my husband had just completed college and had no home. People started laughing at us, saying beitu abakiga bakaba ki (what is wrong with the Bakiga).”

Kaboine says she had used some seeds got from Ibanda and Kabale, but got improved ones from Kawanda, which she used to start a parent garden for her many projects. At the same time, she started grafting local fruits with the improved ones from Kawanda.

“As time went on, I started making my own seedlings because it was very expensive to buy from the research institute or from other established seed nurseries,” she said.

She sells some of the grafted seedlings to local farmers in Ibanda, Kiruhura, Kamwenge, Isingiro and Mbarara districts.

“I have been contracted by the water and environment ministry to supply these districts and others in western Uganda with improved seedlings worth sh35m this season. I will supply them with improved mangoes, oranges, pawpaws, jackfruits and avocados,” she reveals.

Presently, the family has planted a square mile of pine trees in Kitagwenda and 30,000 others in Nyabani, all in Kamwenge district. However, the villagers burnt some of the trees two years ago.

“We have about three hectares of coffee from where we earn sh2m each year. We get sh1m from fish farming. We also supply local farmers with fish fries from our six ponds, which we started in 1999,” she says.

In 2002, Kaboine started to rear Boer goats, but had previously had about 200 local goats at their Nyabani estate. She says they sell about 50 local goats at sh30,000 each and earn approximately sh4m annually.

She says the Boer goats are better because they attract more pay than the local breeds, which are sold at between sh20,000 to sh120,000. The Boers range from sh200,000 each and mature quickly. In just four months, you sell it at about sh300,000.
She earns about sh1m per season from over 20 trees of fruits she had planted earlier.
“I grow only mangoes although I have started on pineapples. Mangoes grow well here and people like them, so there will be a ready market,” she says.
“I have also decided to start a fruit garden for recreation purposes in Nyabuhikye, Ibanda, where I will put tables and chairs for people, who don’t like bars or other noisy places, to come and relax,” she says.

Kaboine also does small-scale agro-processing. She says from her exotic bananas (FHIA17) she got from Kawanda, she has been able to make wine, which she sells locally. “When I started making wine, I was surprised to get five jerrycans of it from one bunch of bananas (100kg). This motivated me to make more wine,” she said.

She, however, laments the lack of funding, saying she has suspended her plans to install a wine refinery.
She adds that if she had a refinery, a lot of bananas would not be going to waste, especially during the time of abandunce between May and July, or later in the year.

“Instead of getting sh2,000, I got sh200,000 from wine after processing. This would be of great help to the locals whose bananas I would process,” she said. “My prayer is to set up a banana wine factory to help locals suffering from low prices,” she says. Sometimes a bunch of bananas goes for as low as sh500 in the rural areas in times of abundance.

In the meantime, she earns about sh100,000 monthly from her two-hectare banana garden. Kaboine earns about sh150m gross and sh50m net monthly.

She is disturbed, though, by the wrong attitude of most people. “It is hard to get workers because people don’t want to work,” she says.
Kaboine advises people to start farming as a business because it is paying. She also advocates for improved modes of farming like use of improved breeds and grafting.

She says: “Grafting is a wonder, especially when one uses organic manure, they get a lot of harvest. Practice more organic farming because synthetic fertilisers are chemicals and destructive in the long-run.”

“I practice organic farming because the manure stays in the soil longer and makes crops better. I prefer kasasiro (garbage) to your NPK,” she says.

Kaboine also advocates for farming because ‘at 57, she says, she feels like a teenager, and does not need to go to the gym as she exercises on her farms.

“When NAADS saw what we were doing, they made me a model farmer and gave me a walking tractor and other implements. They also mulched my coffee plantation.”

The clinical officer who still runs a pharmacy and an in-patients clinic in Ibanda town together with her husband, a medical officer in Ibanda district, believes agriculture, especially crop farming, runs in her blood vessels.

Factfile

Enterprise: Mmelk Enterprises
Farming Activity: Enterprise mix: Bananas, fruits, goats, cattle, poulty keeping, fish farming and breeding AND Agro-Processing.
Location: Various, in Ibanda and Kamwenge districts, but has Demo Farms in Ntungamo and Kyaruhimbi, Nyabuhikye sub-county, Ibanda district.
Income: Gross sh150m; Net sh50m
Contact: 0754 071 847/0772534346
Email: Louiskaboine@yahoo.com

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});