We met to talk about something else. When that was done, I found out about his farm.
I tend to roll my eyes at stories of urban elite running farms. Often, they are vanity projects, subsidized by their paychecks, that can not stand on their own without the subsidy.
My friend, I will call him Jack, made me seat up and listen when he said he had opted for crop farming over cattle farming, though he is from Kashari, long horn Ankole cow country.
I asked him why, he said he wanted to make money and the mathematics of cows did not add up for him...
So, he went off hundreds of kilometers away and got himself land in Masindi, a large expanse of which he now has 230 acres under maize.
I asked whether he went so far for fear of being laughed out of Kashari, he just laughed.
He tried soya bean, it failed. He tried coffee, the environment was too harsh, before eventually settling on maize. He has a few cows of course, wondering around, more for the aesthetics than anything, I think. They are already costing him, they have been responsible for breaking though his fence to get at the maize. Ten acres he has lost to his cows this last season.
Jack, a lawyer, who spent most of his career working abroad, counsels that it would be suicidal to go into an enterprise his size first time.
“I have been studying this for at least 20 years. I worked in Zambia for 18 years and learnt from my friends the ins and out of commercial agriculture there,” he said. And even on his current land he tried out on a small scale, things he thought would work, before jumping in with both feet.
There is a visible gleam in his eyes when he talks about how his experiment has turned out. He has so far done three years and he is keen to build up to 500 acres. Renting land in the area is about sh150,000 an acre per season. There are two maize seasons March to July/August and again from August to December.
“I think another 70 acres for maize will be good, the rest I will leave for the cows, coffee and I want to get back into soya bean,” he says in between sips of his tea.
Jack is looking forward to next season, which planting season will soon be under way, because he discovered and tested a ferterliser that will significantly increase his yields in the next season.
“I am doing about one ton an acre now, with good rain about 1.2 tons with this new ferterliser I am seeing up to two tons an acre,” he says gleefully.
But back to why he cannot be bothered with cows.
“There is no grading as a determination of quality in this country. So the beef from scrawny cows sells at the same price of that cow’s meat which has good genetics and has been looked after well. As long as that continues, a real beef market is hard to see here,” he said.
He points to South Africa where President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Anklole cattle are selling for hundreds of millions of shillings each.
With milk, the wild price fluctuations mean one probably has to set up an processing plant, that means building a large enough herd to do that, a huge capital outlay, which again is a discouragement. It can be done but crop farming is the low hanging fruit.
“Here I have two seasons a year, my friends in southern Africa had only one. It is a nobrainer.”
However, he does not live on the farm. He visits it once every two months, leaving the day-to-day running to his manager.
“I got a young man who was willing to work, had him trained at a agiculture school and sent him off. During the week we talked a lot about integrity and long-term thinking. He has turned out very well,” he said.
In addition to his salary, he is paid a commission on every crop and Jack has helped him get land in his home area and build a house.
In addition, he has an app which monitors his tractor, the biggest asset in his farm. He showed me where it was in real time. The app also monitors fuel consumption, mileage, whether the tractor is due for service and any number of metrics.
"Other than expansion of his farm he is now building storage facilities, mainly to be in control of the price he gets for his crop. Crop prices fluctuate according to seasonal patterns. Prices fall during the harvest and jump when the harvest crop is exhausted....
During his journey Jack was also surprised to find a lot of help for agriculture available.
“I borrowed using the ACF (Agriculture Credit Facility) to buy my tractor and also insured my first failed crop and got reimbursed what I put in. I think these facilities are just not marketed well,” he said.
With the ACF his bank dragged their feet for two months before a chance meeting at the golf course, after which a few calls were made and he had his tractor within the week.
He acknowledges that it is still early days and that he continues to learn, but he is convinced the future is bright.
“I think the urban elite should seriously consider taking up crop farming. Whichever way you look at it, it works,” he said
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