Income from farming is more than a professor’s pay

Mar 03, 2009

TIME check is 9:12am. Already about 30 adults have gathered in the small trading centre of Itojo. They are boozing. An old lady holding a walking stick firmly bellows, “<i>Owekitinisa</i> (the honourable) has come!” He is Elly Sabiiti, a professor of

EVERYDAY for the next few months, The New Vision will run a series of stories on wealth creation role models from all over the country for Ugandans who would like to learn from them to generate wealth from our natural resources.

By Francis Kagolo

TIME check is 9:12am. Already about 30 adults have gathered in the small trading centre of Itojo. They are boozing. An old lady holding a walking stick firmly bellows, “Owekitinisa (the honourable) has come!”

My eyes look around for that Member of Parliament in the vicinity. I was wrong. The ‘honourable’ she is referring to is seated in the same car with me. He is Elly Sabiiti, a professor of agriculture at Makerere University. His wealth, acquired from farming has earned him that title in Rwemitanga village, Itojo sub-county, Ntungamo district.

Since 1996 when he first set his foot in the garden, he has not moved back. He began with quarter an acre of bananas but has expanded his shamba to tens of acres. Today, Sabiiti boasts of 25 heads of crossbreed cattle, eight fresian cows, a five-acre banana plantation, and a three-acre eucalyptus forest. He has 75 acres in total.

Rarely does a Ugandan university don risk to farm. They would rather remain in class teaching, do research, and after a semester or two, lay down their tools in agitation for a pay rise. Sabiiti was no different, until a peasant in Bbowa, Luweero district changed that mentality.

After the NRA war in 1986, Sabiiti was part of the consultancy team the government assigned to devise strategies of modernising agriculture in the Luweero Triangle.

“An old man I was interviewing asked me why professors never practised what they taught. It was an insult. He said we (professors) never used our knowledge to get rich.” Sabiiti says, admitting that he was challenged.

After the consultancy, he could not hold the challenge any more and was determined to follow the peasant’s advice. He asked his father for a plot of land and in 1987 when he got quarter an acre, he planted bananas

After a year, he sold 10 bunches of matooke monthly. His brain had been opened. Sabiiti realised he could earn more money if he expanded the acreage. Two years later, he borrowed sh900,000 and bought a two-acre banana plantation from his father’s neighbour. But the plantation had been abandoned — it was weedy, and yielded small bunches that weighed less than a kilogram.

To make it productive, Sabiiti took a month’s leave from Makerere University and applied the theory he had learnt, taught and kept unused for years. In less than a year, the bananas had started producing bunches that weighed over 50kg.

Today his properly-managed shamba stands out among several other unproductive small ones. Secret? Using traditional methods of farming.

“I prefer using traditional methods to chemicals,” he says. Besides regular weeding, mulching, applying banana peels and cow dung to boost soil fertility, he also uproots the whole banana stumps after cutting off the bunches. The stumps are then split into pieces and exposed to sunlight.

“This impedes the multiplication of pests like banana weevils,” Sabiiti explains. In mulching, he prefers banana leaves to grass because they are better at conserving moisture and suffocating weeds. “The idea is that we do not want to lose any nutrients from the soil.”

In 1996, already convinced farming was profitable, he bought three acres of land and planted more bananas. He grows only the traditional varieties such as muzuba, kibuzi, and enjagaata.

He employs two men whom he pays sh100,000 a month to take care of the plantation, especially ensuring it is weed-free.

But not all weeds are bad, Sabiiti explains. Some, like the Galisonga SPP are left to grow with the bananas, because they are associated with high soil fertility.
A kilometre away from the banana shamba lies another chunk of land, divided into five wide paddocks. Herehe keeps animals. Although Sabiiti bought the cows just to carry on the ‘Banyankole culture’ of keeping animals for social status, today he is glad.

“In 1987, my father gave me a cow. Whenever it produced a bull, I would sell it and buy a heifer. Slowly, they multiplied,” he says.

Sabiiti has been selling off cows to solve problems as they arise, especially paying his children’s school fees. Currently he has 25 head of cattle in Rwemitanga village.

One admirable feature on his farm is the ‘well-managed’ green pastures, on which his cows graze, through rotational grazing. The paddock system he practises does not demand much labour as zero-grazing since it allows cows to graze themselves. The paddocks are dotted with trees that provide a shed for the cows. But he is selective in the type of trees he plants on the farm.

“Only trees like cycads that can improve soil fertility are allowed to grow on a farm,” he explains. Such trees draw nitrogen from the atmosphere and fix it into the soil which boosts fertility and growth of pasture.

The farm has a milking parlour and a grass-thatched shed where calves sleep until they are eight months. He explains that calves need warmth for proper growth. The shed is dirt-free to avoid worms. It is raised two feet above the ground which allows urine to drain out. Sabiiti says that cows create wealth much easily, and have sustained his family.

“Their market is readily available. Whenever I get a problem, I just come and sell some.”

Using proceeds from matooke and cows in 2000, Sabiiti, bought another 25-acre land at sh8m in Kayangeje, Wakiso district. He bought a friesian cow from Kabanyolo, Makerere University farm, bought seven others from various farmers, and put up a dairy farm in the area.

In farming, Sabiiti looked for another source of income to supplement his monthly pay from Makerere University, but with time, this has changed. Instead, it is the salary supplementing income from farming because he gets much more money from farming than teaching. For instance, from the eight friesian cows in Wakiso, he gets 70 litres of milk a day. He sells each litre at sh800 In a year, he earns sh19m. This is besides the 12 litres he collects from Rwemitanga farm, where three cows are milked daily.

On average, Sabiiti says, an acre of bananas produces 60 bunches a month. If he sold each at sh5,000, he would earn sh18m from the bananas a year.
In 2001, a house he was constructing in Kampala stalled for two years and his neighbours mocked him. He had no money to complete the house, and the salary could not save him from the ridicule. The solution lay in his cattle.

“I sold 40 cows, got sh17m, and I was able to complete my house. Now I have a retirement home in Kampala,” Sabiiti says.
Sabiiti also has a three-acre forest of eucalyptus, which he planted in 1994. He has cut the wood several times and earned over sh10m in the last few years. Recently, he sold some trees and got sh3m. From the forest, he also gets firewood, poles to support the bananas and poles to fence his farm.

He does not regret taking on farming, and though aging, he is still strong-willed. Sabiiti plans to start a company in Itojo, and turn his dairy farm in Wakiso into a training centre for both students and farmers. His vision is to have more than 200 head of cattle. He says farming saved him from buying food for his parents and family.
“Since I went into farming, the income and nutrition status of my family improved.”

With farming, Sabiiti is confident his life after retirement is secure. He is now consolidating his assets; he has contracted surveyors who are mapping all his land. About the old man who opened up his eyes, Sabiiti says, “It is a pity I do not remember the man. I would have paid him back.”

Considering all he has earned from agriculture, the 58-year-old professor now asserts: “There is money in farming. That is a fact. All the time you will be having money.”

He scoffs at colleagues in the academia who always put government on tension over poor salaries: “Government cannot pay you enough money to meet all your needs. But many of my colleagues at Makerere keep on striking over poor salaries. You will never see me in their meetings.”

In the 27 years he has taught at Makerere, Sabiiti has attended the lecturers’ meetings only twice, “because they always meet to cry over poor salaries.”

He says he would rather go to his farm and see the health of his cows than attend those meetings,
But all has not been roses for Sabiiti. He is haunted by the absence of an efficient organised marketing system in the country.
He says most farmers are cheated as they sell their produce on farm. The high costs of agricultural inputs and disparities in weather conditions, punctuated by drought and thunderstorms, also bother him.


FACT FILE

Name of farmer:

Prof. Elly Sabiiti
Location of farm: Rwemitanga, Ntungamo district and Wakiso district
Enterprises:
Trees, cattle farm and banana
How he started:
In 1987, he got quarter an acre of land from his father where he planted bananas and kept on expanding. He also was given a cow.
Sales record:

sh18m from bananas, sh19m from milk annually
Winning formula:
Hardwork, innovation

ABOUT SABIITI
  • Born in 1951 to Faith Turyakira and Eriab Nyambobo. Ntungamo district.

  • Attended Bujaga Primary, Mbarara and Ntare for secondary. Graduated with a bachelor’s of science in agriculture in 1976 at Makerere University.

  • Got a master’s degree in Pasture Agronomy from MUK in 1979.

  • Graduated with a Ph.D at University of New Brunswick, Canada in 1985.

  • Has won various awards for his contribution to agriculture in Uganda.

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