Combining caging and ponds: One company’s experience

An employee feeds fish in cages. Caging is one of the methods that is increasingly being adopted. PHOTO BY EDMOND TAREMWA

 
Fish farming in Uganda is a viable business enterprise that continues to attract investment, both large- and small-scale, as it develops.
The advantages likely to be enjoyed by an individual farmer or business in Uganda are adequate water, good soils, a ready market, availability of feeds and skilled labour.


There are a variety of methods by which fish can be farmed. Some of these are caging, ponds, and tanks, among others.

Allen Kusasira, research development and extension manager of Source of the Nile Farm (SON), believes fish caging is the way to go in today’s tight business environment.

SON is located in Bugungu, Buikwe District along the shores of Lake Victoria. It has been in operation since 2006, has 89 employees, and farms fish in both cages and ponds.

Simple to operate
Though she acknowledges it is highly capital intensive, Kusasira also cites the advantages. “We operate at higher costs compared to other businesses since most items we use in our work are imported,” she says.
“Our business is a very simple one to operate as long as you do not put off any activity while at work. We hardly find any challenges, I must say, except as usual, the environmental factors that affect our work.

“Fish here reared both in ponds and lake water where over 30 grids have been constructed with each grid bearing over 10 cages,” says Hassan Muganda, one of the workers.

“The cages are in different sizes; the smaller ones contain around 2,800 fish each, and the bigger size contain around 18,000 fish.”
Kusasira explains, “Our biggest problem is water. For the ponds, the water has got to retain its natural colour, failure of which the fish will suffocate.

When the water in the ponds turns green, it fails the circulation of oxygen in the water, which can make the fish suffocate. Also, there is a problem of bad weather. Whenever there is drought, water tends to dry up and this limits productivity, ” she says.

Breeding
The initial stage involves carrying fish from the lake to ponds for breeding, which takes 21 days. The recommended ratio of male to female is 1:2, usually around 300:600 fish.

After breeding, adult fish is transferred to another pond as a way of separating them from the young ones (pictured).
With the above ratio, there would be a projection of 20,000 young fish after breeding, which are then transferred to the hapa (a cage made with nets) in which they are confined during that stage.

Feeding
“Feeding is the most technical part of this business because fish is fed according to its stage,” explains Hassan Muganda, “At the youngest stage, fish are fed on fry meal, a 45 per cent protein food. This is treated with a sexing hormone responsible for making them all female (which is the desired sex).

The second stage is fingerlings which feed on the same food. Juveniles, the third stage, are fed on the same but with 35 per cent protein content.
The last stage is table size or production stage and the protein content is 25 to 30 per cent. The other foods include crude protein, fat, ash and moisture.

With advance in technology, there are more efficient feeding methods, most noticeable is the demand feeder, a can-like machine placed in the middle of the cage or pond with a pendulum that the fish keep on striking as feed is cast in the water. There is also an automatic feeder, which is used for juveniles.

Business
Kusasira is a bit hesistant to speak about business. But she later reveals that they strictly invest in fish and have never diversified business despite the competition faced from lake fish because of the smaller fish size produced on the farm.

“In five years,” she anticipates, “We look forward to increasing our productivity, processing our own produce and capturing bigger markets.”

The market
Fish in this system is to a large extent sold within Uganda and is never processed. “We have not sold processed fish, apart from merely slicing it, and this reduces our operational costs.

What makes this business possible is that as you start it, you get your permanent customers to always buy your deliveries. We sell most of our fish in the local market and some to Rwanda and Kenya,” says Kusasira.

Building a strong farmers’ organisation

It is in the spirit of knowledge sharing that I am passing these points to the readers. Most of these ideas were obtained from an agricultural journalists’ conference hosted by Eastern Africa Farmers Federation in Nairobi, Kenya, about two weeks ago in which your columnist was a participant.

A farmer organisation should not be dependent on donor funding but rather on members contribution with as little as 10 per cent coming from donors or government.

It should promote gender equity and democracy in its leadership and all activities.

It should endeavour to promote its members from individual subsistence farming to entreneurship, value addition, and higher levels on the value chain.

A farmer organisation should encourage proactive communication and ensure members are well informed about new developments, prices, markets, and challenges, if any. There should be information flow and experience sharing between members.

The organisations should be specific and commodity based instead of being generalised.

Members should avoid forming cliques that are opposed to resolutions made in general meetings. As much as possible, a farmers’ organisation should stick to its constitution and by-laws. The members should respect elected leaders and technical staff; in the event of any crisis or conflict, they should strive to sort them out without outside intervention.

All members should meet their obligations such as timely payment of subscriptions or loan installments, and reporting punctually for meetings.

Farmer organisations should promote a team culture, honesty, and good governance and should abhor divisions and discrimination based on political and religious affiliation or ethnicity.

The leaders should be transparent and accountable to the members, and should organise regular meetings, where everybody is given equal opportunity to express their views about any issues concerning their organisation.

The leaders should be ready to let others take over leadership when their term expires

Kapchorwa farmers’ group overcomes setbacks, earns from coffee and matooke

Members in the matooke garden. PHOTO BY ALLAN CHEKWECH

In mid-2006, 40 farmers in Kongowo parish, Kaserem Sub-county, Kapchorwa District decided to work together under an association in a bid to boost their income. Now, eight years later, Kongowo Farmers’ Association is making returns on the initial investment.

Stephen Labu, the association’s chairperson, recounts that when they came together, they did not have jointly owned land. So, a one member offered about five acres to the group.

“I had been trading in coffee on a small scale. So, we needed to grow our own when we agreed to come together,” he says.
When they started growing Arabica coffee, making a nursery bed was the first attempt. The group talked to a friend in Bulambuli District who gave them 4,000 seedlings.

The beginning
Initially, though, a few people were committed to watering and taking care of the nursery bed. But, eventually, within that year, the seedlings were ready for transplanting. Then, in early 2007, the farmers started tilling the land. Since they were many, the work was made easier.

“Of course, some members were lazy but we kept on encouraging them. We would dig up the holes and transfer the seedlings together,” recalls Robert Bulasiyo Rapkwalai, the group’s vice chairperson.

They would work together and irrigate the land when there were no rains, they would also weed and care for the crops together. When it came to buying the pestsides, each member would contribute an amount.

Rapkwalai says when they were setting up the coffee plantation, they copied the Naads programme style used in neighbouring villages.
So, the spacing and application of fertilisers was done from an informed point of view.

The maintenance routine went on for three years before their first harvest in the 2010 season.
Labu says when it came to picking the coffee beans, most members went to the farm; they were able to collect 3,500 kilogrammes in phases by end of the season.

Sharing proceeds
Since the coffee beans need to be ground, all members participate in this in order to reduce costs. They also do the washing and drying together.
“At that time, coffee prices had fallen to Shs3,200 a kilo. So we earned Shs11.2m. The money was not much, each one got something and rest of the money was used to buy fertilisers and in maintaining the farm,” Rapkwalai says.

Labu points out that after the first season, the crop does not require a lot of maintenance. Therefore, most of the work was trimming and spraying.
In the 2011 season, the group harvested 6,000 kilogrammes and at that time, the prices had increased to Shs4,200 a kilogramme. They garnered Shs25.2m in total.

Like in the first season, they shared the money; but the owner of the land is always given a bigger percentage, Labu says, although he did not disclose the amount. Each of them earns between Shs300,000 to Shs500,000 per season.

The next season was in 2012 which also saw an improvement in yields. The farmers got 8,000 kilogrammes, which was sold at Shs7,000 per kilogramme. They earned Shs56m which was shared as before.

Adding matooke
“We hold meetings very often. Usually, when the produce is sold, we sit together, calculate the income and decide on how much to share and how much to keep on the association’s accounts,” Rapkwalai adds.

In the 2013 season, they expected 10,000 kilogrammes but due to change in weather conditions, they got 6,500 kilogrammes. The prices had fallen to Shs3,100 a kilo. The group earned Shs20m.

To cushion the drop in coffee earning, Kongowo farmers’ association had its first earnings from matooke, which they had diversified to in 2011. One of the members offered about three acres of land for the establishment of a matooke plantation

They planted 480 suckers and last year, they harvested about 500 bunches of matooke which they sold in Mbale and Sironko at Shs15,000 per bunch. They got Shs7.5m.

The group has started ploughing for an extra acre for matooke. Though they have had challenges along the way, the group is expanding their business. Last year, they were in position to buy 24 acres of land in Bulambuli District at Shs20m

A female worker picks hot pepper in a field. Research findings show that despite being more in number, women farmers in African countries, including Uganda, produce less per hectare of land than the men. Photo BY ABUBAKER LUBOWA

A report published by The World Bank and the One Campaign reveals a serious gender gap in African agriculture with Ugandan women producing 13 per cent less compared to men on a hectare of land.

Titled “Levelling the Field: Improving Opportunities for Women Farmers in Africa”, it examines scale and causes of the dramatic differences between how much men and women farmers produce in these African countries--Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda--which together make up more than 40 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa’s population.

Key findings
The study found that although almost half the agricultural workers across the continent are women and their productivity on their farms is significantly lower per hectare compared to men.

In these six countries profiled, the range at which women produce less than men stands at as follows: Malawi 25 per cent, Ethiopia 23 per cent, Niger 19, and Nigeria (South 24 per cent North 4 per cent), Uganda 13 per cent and Tanzania has the lowest at six per cent.

Other key findings include: Equal access to resources such as fertiliser, farm labour and training does not always translate into equal returns for women farmers.

And policy interventions like securing women’s land rights and improving their access to hired labour are critical for reducing the gender gap and expanding economic growth which is needed to end poverty.

Tackling inequality
The report says agriculture has enormous potential to drive inclusive economic growth, improve food security, and create job opportunities for millions of Africans.

Two thirds of Africa’s citizens depend on farming for their livelihoods and more than 90 per cent of the poorest people engage in agriculture. Given equal access to productive resources, women farmers worldwide could increase farm yields by as much as 20 to 30 per cent, meaning 100 to 150 million fewer people would go to bed hungry every day.

The World Bank Group and One Campaign officials say tackling the pervasive inequality faced by women farmers across Africa is critical if the continent is to reduce poverty, boost economic growth and feed its growing population.

Gender gaps
This first of its type report reveals deep rooted gender gaps in African agriculture, identifies factors holding back women farmers, and sets out concrete actions that policy makers can take to reduce inequality.

Officials argue that closing this gap can help boost household incomes and livelihoods, as well as provide cheap and nutritious food to Africa’s growing population.

“This presents the clearest evidence to date about the breadth and depth of the gender gap in African agriculture. It argues that by spear-heading proven, effective policies that target the needs of female farmers, such as strengthening land rights, governments can help farming families tackle the low-productivity traps that entrench poverty and prevent millions of farmers from leading decent lives,” said Makhtar Diop, Vice President, Africa Region, World Bank.

The authors point out that the report is particularly timely as the African Union has declared 2014 the “Year of Agriculture and Food Security”, bringing much needed attention to the farming sector’s potential to transform the continent.

Address key areas
ONE Africa Director, Dr Sipho Moyo, explained, “We ignore this gender gap at our peril and ultimately at great social and economic cost. It is a real injustice to Africa’s women farmers and their families that women make up nearly half of the labour force in agriculture but, on average, produce less per hectare than men.

This absurd gender gap further undermines the sector’s potential to drive inclusive economic growth, improve food security and create employment and business opportunities for millions of young Africans entering the job market every year”

He added: “If governments and partners invest in agriculture and, in particular, its women farmers today, they can be assured of a legacy of greater equality and boundless opportunity that will benefit Africans for generations to come and may usher the beginning of the end of aid dependence for our people.”

To narrow the gender gap, African governments are called upon to address key policy areas which will help empower women farmers

Grain Bulking the way to go for smallholder farmers

Objectives:
To develop sustainable value chains and reduce poverty by increasing smallholder farmers’ access to commercial staple foods markets.

Duration: February 2010 – May 2011

Geographical locations: Southern and Eastern Regions of Uganda, Western Kenya and Kigali, Rwanda.

Partners: Funded USAID COMPETE and implemented in partnership with UNADA.

SSMATI supported agrodealers in Southern and Eastern Regions of Uganda to aggregate surpluses from smallholder farmers and link the commodity to the formal markets in Rwanda and Kenya that are grain deficit countries.

Impact:

An alternative, more competitive, Market for Grain for small holder farmers was developed through the agrodealers Agrodealers in Kenya and Uganda were trained on grain bulking and were supported to improve storage facilities.

By the end of the project period these agrodealers had purchased 2,234 MT of grain valued at $ 502,000 from 14,566 smallholder farmers Supported agrodealers continue to provide market for surplus grain from farmers.

From Farm to Table: Navigating Food Safety in China

Dec 1, 2013

Brady Sidwell is the Vice President of Corporate Development and Strategy of Asia Pacific Operations at the OSI Group. The OSI Group is a world leader in providing quality animal protein to the global food industry. They have a presence in sixteen countries, and have been operating in China for over twenty years. In this blog, Sidwell discusses food safety crises in China, as well as strategies to effectively overcome them.

Over the last ten years, China has played an increasing role in world agriculture trade, ranked as the fourth largest agricultural exporter and the second largest importer in the world. Yet, they struggle with several obstacles to agricultural modernization, including changing tastes and a demand for imported food, resource scarcity, a population shifting from rural to urban, as well as food transport and food safety.

Over the last two decades, OSI has witnessed many of the trends and obstacles in the Chinese agricultural market, food safety being one of the most visible in the media. As a private company in a foreign country, we’re setting an international standard for best practices in food safety. 

OSI Group in China

OSI has had a presence in China for twenty-one years now – just last weekend, we opened our ninth and tenth facilities. Our national footprint in food processing is extensive, producing poultry, beef, pork, as well as vegetables and dough. Currently, OSI is the largest protein supplier to quick service restaurants in China. By the end of this year, OSI will employ about 6,600 people in China, and we’re on track to process about 300 million birds in our poultry vertical integrations by 2015.

The Root Food Safety Issues in China

At the core of most food safety issues in China is lack of control over the food supply chain. Typically, the product you see in a restaurant or in the grocery aisle has changed hands several times, from the grower or producer, to the packer, to the transporter (usually several, depending on the distance the product has to travel), to the store or restaurant. Each of these entities is usually a separate business, with different standards and procedures. This means there is rarely an overarching body overseeing these transactions and ensuring there are no ‘breakdowns’ along the way.

Integrate Your Supply Chain

The best way to eliminate the potential for food safety crises is to gain control over your supply chain, eliminating the number of middlemen between China’s fragmented farm base and the end consumer. As an example, OSI Group has very consciously made several large scale investments in vertically integrating.

We’ve developed a closed system where we control everything, from the parent stock, to the hatchery, to the broiler farms, to the slaughterhouse, all the way to the distribution.  It’s a system that’s worked well to protect both our and our customer’s brands, and we’re expanding our efforts to be more vocal in showing other agricultural production companies how these models can help ensure with food safety.

Control Your Own Supply

OSI farms its own product as well as purchases from a network of producers which must comply with strict audit criteria rechecked regularly. We ensure that our suppliers are approved not only around quality, food safety and corporate governance, but also in aspects like animal welfare and employee code of conduct. We work hard to set the standard for best practices and maintain that standard throughout the organization.

Support Your Growers

There’s currently a void in China around extension of technical know-how and support for agricultural industry best practices, so private companies like OSI are filling the void. For example, we provide agronomists for our regional and local vegetable growers, who work directly with farmers on irrigation and planting, choosing seed varieties and pesticides, testing water for potential contaminants. In terms of poultry and beef production, we provide support with genetics and feed rations. Essentially, OSI acts as an extension agent to improve the quality of our supply. We believe that if our suppliers are strong, we’re strong.

Media Messaging

Whenever there’s a widespread food safety crisis, the population gets bombarded with a lot of messages from the media, many of which are conflicting or incorrect. For example, when the bird flu epidemic broke out, people stopped eating poultry even though you can’t get sick if it’s cooked properly. We work closely with officials and media services to get audiences accurate information to help guide their choices.

Think Long Term Strategy and Execution

Food safety is a major long-term opportunity because we can control our environment, we can operate independently, and we can do it at a scale that makes it possible for us to serve a national customer. The key factor is execution. Anyone can put together a strategy on paper, or make a forecast about how quickly we can get to a certain cost point. But these are huge operations that require a significant amount of skilled labor. Invest in education, support services, training, and streamlining processes – these are the factors that will bring one’s strategy to success.

Educating the Global Agribusiness Entrepreneur in China

Jun 21, 2013Wendy BeechamWayne Batwin

Wayne Batwin is the President of PRIME Market Access International, a management consulting firm. He has more than 34 years of experience in international food and agriculture research and policy, marketing, and market development. Batwin recently retired from the Foreign Agriculture Service of USDA, where from 2006 to 2010 he was the Director of Agricultural Trade Office at the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai, China.He is a presenter at the upcoming Global Agribusiness Entrepreneur Symposium Series in China.

China has an incredibly rich agricultural tradition; Chinese farmers have been cultivating crops for thousands of years. However, radical changes in the last century have had a profound impact on agricultural production, and there are several constraints that the Chinese agricultural sector is facing that impacts their ability to modernize agribusiness today.

Keep in mind that China has 1.35 billion people to feed every day. Compared to the U.S., China has over 4 times the population but only 75% of our cropland.  Adding to this pressure are dietary changes (mostly towards higher meat consumption) as a result of substantial economic growth over the last two decades. Chinese consumer trends are changing among the growing middle class. Furthermore, geographical and logistical challenges abound in China. Most of the population lives along the east coast in major urban centers, while most of the agriculture is spread throughout the country. The lack of water and other agricultural inputs is also having an impact on agricultural production, especially in the northern and western regions where water is scarce.  Lastly, land usage and ownership are serious social and economic issue that needs to be reorganized before China can truly make the transition to a modern agricultural system.

The Critical Need for Education

As many of these issues pose serious obstacles towards modernization, Chinese agribusiness is still making headway. Reforms have taken place to allow some private sector entrepreneurs to create businesses that meet current demand. Inroads have been made to create larger tracks of land to grow and harvest a larger quantity of food products, and some advances have been made to transportation systems that allow products to be delivered to the consumer in a timely manner.

These changes have been accomplished by individual entrepreneurs relying on their own ingenuity and personal connections to get their products to market. But this is not enough given the kind of demand the industry is facing today. Many of these entrepreneurs work tirelessly on their own businesses and lack training in what is needed to scale their businesses within the agricultural sector specifically. They are hungry to understand what it takes to be part of an expanding industry and to grow their businesses in accordance with this increasing demand. They want to know the kinds of agricultural mechanization it will take and the kind of cooperation that goes into building a large-scale agricultural sector. These entrepreneurs are successful, but they don’t yet have access to ongoing training that is specific to agribusiness. This kind of training has not been readily available in China. Although there are exceptional universities in China, the kind of continuing executive education that’s common in western countries is very unusual in China.

According to Mr. Edward Zhu, CEO of the Chic Group, agribusiness education reform requires that applied education needs to be incorporated into higher educational systems and developed to focus on “learning from practice” with hands-on training in agronomy, agri-business management and world’s best agricultural practices. He explains, “We must advocate importing the world’s top agri-businesses, agri-universities and training institutes to speed up the learning curve.” In response, UC Davis Executive Education has taken the reigns in addressing this critical need.

UC Davis Responds

Ranked #1 in the world for teaching and research in the area of agriculture, and world renowned in the areas of management and economics, UC Davis is uniquely positioned to leverage the rich expertise from its faculty to deliver compelling executive education curriculum. Moreover, its agribusiness symposium series features industry experts with on-the-ground know-how, who can present lessons learned in the U.S. that can be applied to the Chinese market. UC Davis Executive Education successfully identified a critical business need and pooled the resources and connections to address significant knowledge gaps at the leadership level of China’s agribusinesses.

Having worked closely in the agribusiness sector in China for many years, I’m convinced there’s a real need for this type of education. We’re starting to see a lot of buzz and excitement in response to this program, and our hope is that we can have a key impact in modernizing agribusiness in China.