Calling all possibilists: come work with us on the ground in Kamuli to build a grain facility!

Our region Busoga currently has the most dreaded levels of poverty in Uganda, and is now facing chronic hunger and malnutrition due to sugarcane monoculture.

Sugarcane has ruthlessly displaced food crops in our region, resulting not only in frequent hunger, but deeper poverty, and it's been this way for years.

Sugarcane isn't our main problem though:

The reason every household here in Busoga is growing sugarcane is because sugarcane is the only crop we can find a relatively ready market for.

But the real problem we face is: we do not have reliable markets for food crops like maize, millet, beans, sorghum etc that could both provide food and an income.

This is further exacerbated by poor postharvest handling, which alone causes food losses of nearly half of farmers' produce here in Busoga, especially grains.

Help us change this:

We are looking for possibilists — everyone who believes a better world is possible — to come and work directly with us on the ground here in Kamuli to install a grain cleaning, drying and storage facility that will cut postharvest food losses, create markets for food crops (thus encouraging food production), and help farmers shift away from sugarcane monoculture.

This facility will be installed by British firm Alvan Blanch at a total cost of ~$1m. Given the scale of poverty in our region, though, if we can find enough possibilists to work with us, we will instead replicate a more advanced, 6,000 metric ton grain processing facility that was installed in western Uganda, in a place called Kigumba, by Danish firm Cimbria.

Still, either (Alvan's or Cimbria's) will be a big lift from the poverty we are facing.

Help us help ourselves. Come build this facility together with us!

Impact:

This facility will create markets for all grains, and link the poorest rural farmers in our region with buyers like Breweries, as well as international relief agencies like the UN’s WFP (currently the biggest buyer of grains in Africa), UNHCR, World Vision, GOAL, Red Cross, among others. 

And since all the crops this facility will get farmers to grow on a large scale (sorghum, maize, millet, rice, beans) are food crops, it will also contribute towards food security in our region, undoing sugarcane’s ills.

Here are 4 ways you can help:

1) If you are a possibilist who is ready to work with us here in Kamuli to install this facility, please come. And in this case, if you also intend to help us raise part of the needed funding, we recommend that you come with your contribution in person, so we can allocate it together with you.

2). If you are someone who is ready to help, but won’t be able to come to Kamuli, please pay our equipment suppliers directly so they can simply come and install this facility for us. In this case, please let us know so we can guide you who to pay.

3). If options 1 and 2 above can't work for you, make a bank transfer, or support us via employee workplace giving where your contribution will be matched by your employer. In both cases, use the details here.

4). If the above options still aren't a fit for you, make a contribution on the current page, or create your own fundraiser on our behalf by tapping "I want to fundraise for this". We will update this page daily, adding all offline contributions received via bank; employee workplace giving, and those paying for equipment directly.

For more information about our cause, and how you can work with us, go here.

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This page was created by Anthony, a rural farmer in Busoga, and founder of the Uganda Community Farm (UCF), a nonprofit fighting extreme poverty. 

The main photo above is of a farmer in Buyende, who takes part in the UCF's current sorghum project. Buyende is one of Busoga's eleven districts.

Here is Anthony's video from a previous campaign for our agro-processing plant: