Country: Uganda

Organization: East and Central Uganda Integrated Farmers' Association (ECUIFA)

3) Strategy Summary:
East and Central Uganda Integrated Farmers' Association (ECUIFA) has created a new development system to rural areas parallel to the traditional top to down approach that has been used by government and funding agencies. It involves working with rural communities to stimulate farmers to work together to identify creative solutions that rely on local resources.

ECUIFA believes that the prevailing approach to rural development in East Africa and many third world countries overlooks the real needs of subsistence farmers, resulting into wasted resources and potentials.

Besides, our organisation is concerned with improving the socio-economic status of rural people, by working with them to develop home-grown innovations that have been second rated to government and funding agencies prescribed solutions resulting into declining productivity and erosion of confidence. So, our efforts aim at making farmers take a lead in their activities by holistically using the abundant resources in their vicinities and later move towards the so-called modern farming through a step by step holistic approach.

This will be achieved by working with farmers to develop curricula that will be used during the training. Already, such a curriculum has been developed and is in use in East Africa.

4) How the Strategy Works:
Planning and implementing rural development packages without involvement of the stakeholders (the rural people), has always been the trend by the government and many funding organisations' development strategies. This approach has always been based on results from other countries where such packages have performed miracles by involving the use of high yielding exotic breeds of crops, livestock and poultry that require critical management and high demands of in puts in terms of fertilizers, management, chemicals and drugs, etc. thus neglecting the use of the indigenous knowledge and locally available resources.

The trend has always been to make rural poor people to be producers of food crops and other cash crops that are bought by town traders at low prices, for processing, to make high quality expensive products that are transported and sold back to rural areas.

This trend makes life almost impossible to rural communities, eg. Maize and other carbohydrate foods that are abundantly grown in Uganda and in many other Third World Countries are sold to other urban traders who mill it to make maize meal plus poultry and livestock feeds. These products are transported back to rural areas and sold at a price which may be five (5) to ten (10) times more expensive than the raw materials.

However, ECUIFA believes that in situations where economic trends stagnate or is negative (as it is always with cash shaped government aid programmes in Third World Countries), it is the indigenous farming system that have merit over the so called modern farming methods. So, to improve the socio-economic status of rural people, there is a need to improve the indigenous farming system through a step by step approach, but by involving the stake holders (the rural people) who should take a lead of changes with their communities. The technocrats will then identify the problems, develop and test simple innovation that will enable the rural communities improve on their production so that with time, appropriate farming systems evolve.

In this new approach, farmers should use the indigenous farming system, the indigenous farming knowledge, the self help spirit etc and incorporate these with modern farming system but in a holistic way. This is what ECUIFA has done, eg. It has worked with farmers to develop techniques that enable farmers to multiply birds easily and that enable them to treat these birds using herbal medicine. To improve on the birds' nutrition, ECUIFA had designed a system whereby farmers can produce and grind the abundant carbohydrate feed that are then mixed with technically made concentrates which are mixed with milled carbohydrates to make balanced feeds for the intended poultry and livestock species in rural areas at farm level.

The approach has been first identifying community and mobilisation of the people via church leaders, civic leaders, government extension agents, traditional leaders, radio announcements, the press, schools, etc. then a problem mapping survey is made by working and discussing with the people to find out the root causes of poverty in the area, the possible solutions, problems that may be encountered, etc. in relation to the available resources with a view of how best these resources can be tapped holistically for the benefits of he people.

A work plan and curriculum for the community are made and training programmes start. The curriculum is set in thirteen modules, allowing farmers to easily build skills over time, rather than all at once. Among the topics that are covered are group dynamics, poverty analysis, poultry keeping, animal breeding, poultry housing, feed mixing at farm level, poultry feeding, manure production and utilisation, basic marketing and pricing, programmed hatching of day old chicks on one particular day per week, fruit and vegetable growing, processing of perishable farm produce, etc.

However, each community may take two core courses at a go i.e. group formation and chicken production, the reason being that women and children who are one of the vulnerable groups in the community, are the ones who traditionally keep these birds hence a need to enable them get an income.

Having worked with the group for over ten years, ECUIFA developed many new methods and simple technologies that has enabled farmers to better their income.

Group formation has been easily achieved the best number per group being 20 members with one group centre where feeds are mixed, vaccines are distributed, information in disseminated, produces are sold, etc. Members of one group help each other in activities such as poultry house construction. This is important because in Uganda, we have many widow run families and orphan children families are also a common scene.

Each member in a group should keep at least 10 (ten) indigenous hens and one exotic cock. Community contribution is seeked. The hens are programmed so that they can hatch on one particular day of the week where the community members such as orphans or aged people cannot afford to acquire the number of chickens. The outcome of this approach has been an evolution of a system that now emphasises the need to cross breed indigenous chickens with exotic egg and layer cocks to come up with an improved indigenous chicken whose egg laying ability and meat quantity are high.

One of such cross breeding programmes is that which aims at coming up with an improved breed of chicken known as the Rakai Improved Chicken. It is being carried out by the poor rural farmers.

This programme involves crossing of indigenous hens(10) with exotic egg type cocks (1) to give rise to F1 crosses. The F1 female birds are crossed with broiler cocks to give rise to F2. The finally, F2 female birds are crossed with indigenous cocks to induce disease resistance in F3 off springs.

This has been achieved with remarkable success in Rakai District, but we need more time to see, observe and conclude.

However, some farmers are just concentrating on improving on the performance of indigenous chicken through selection and elimination. Success has been achieved in selection for eggs with selected local strains now laying 80% to 90%.

Manure that is corrected from the poultry units is returned to the garden, leading to high yields of food crops, vegetables and fruits. The excess fruits and some vegetables are processed to make long lasting products, such as jam, squashes, juices, vegetable pickles, fruit syrups, etc. for home use and for sale.

Eggs and chicken are sold but some are consumed by the family members. The outcome of this has been improved nutrition in the family and better income. Farmers, especially women, have been able to diversity their activities by buying land to grow perennial crops or buy cattle.

ECUIFA's next step will be to scale up its finding within the region and globally, to set up a college later and to publish its curriculum on a website for the good of mankind.

5) Key Strategy Elements:

i. Mobilizing Citizen Support:
i. Mobilizing Citizen Support:
(i) Community Identification:
We will need to identify communities that have abundant resources especially for the redundant youth (redundant manpower) to minimise rural to urban migration.

(ii) Mapping of the area to find out problems and possible solutions.

(iii) Community training.

(iv) Activity monitoring.

(v) Result interpretation.

(vi) Construction of up country feed mills.

(vii) Scaling up.

(viii) Diversification.

(ix) Dissemination of findings.

(x) Setting up a college.

6) Increasing Self-sufficiency and Social Impact:
East and Central Uganda Integrated Farmers' Association's new holistic approach to rural development considers self reliance as one of its objectives. Its aim formally is to increase the monthly income of rural farmers, especially so the rural women from below $25 to over $150 per month through profitable farming by farmers starting with what they have and by themselves taking a lead.

Already, many interlinked technologies have been developed and tried. The basis of these being that of synchronised hatching of day old chicks at one particular day of the week. Along this innovation, rural farmers have constructed poultry houses, have grown carbohydrates feed source (maize) to be mixed with ECUIFA concentrates.

ECUIFA has installed a feed mill that mixes concentrates specifically for rural areas. The concentrates are mixed with milled carbohydrate feed source in the villages, thereby reducing feed costs by 40% - 46%, thus enabling farmers to sell high value farm produce such as eggs, milk, chicken as compared to the selling of cheap carbohydrate foods. Because there are no milling services in the rural areas, ECUIFA will install some to rural areas, so as to bring services nearer to the people. One such mill at Kakiri has been completed and 6 others will be completed this year. The profits that will accrue from these mills will be ploughed back and be used to construct 29 other mills so that in ten years' time, a total of 35 mills will have been installed in rural areas.

Eggs and chicken that are produced by members are sold and some consumed by members.

Another approach of increasing self sufficiency has been the formation of groups of 20 people per group. From each group, two (2) community based trainers have been trained specifically for training others. Besides, the programme involves the growing of both timber and fruit trees by the farmers who remit 5% of their sales back to the association.

The abundant manure produced by the confined birds has been used for improving soil fertility leading to more yield.

However, the more yield has led to market stagnation calling for elementary processing farm produce to make products such as jams, juices, wines, squashes, chicken and animal feed both for sale and for home use, thus increase farmers' socio- economic status.

The improved income has enabled women to buy land, diversify their activities by keeping cattle, bees, pigs, etc thus improving their socio-economic status.

To crown it all, is the realisation by the grass root farmers for the need to improve the indigenous stock, to use indigenous knowledge, the indigenous crops, the indigenous herbs, etc. The result of these has been the formation of local livestock and poultry breeders' associations such as Rakai Indigenous Chicken Breeders' Association, Bwijanga Indigenous Chicken Breeders' Association, etc. These associations aid in marketing of products.

ECUIFA's step by step approach to problem solving can be applied in any part of the world, provided that mapping the area to identify resources is done first and then identifying the resources (crops, animals, etc).

8) Organization Mission and Vision:
Increase the monthly income of low income people from below $25 to over $150 through profitable farming but by people using locally available resources first and go on improving their skills through a step by step approach so that at a latter stage, cross fertilisation of indigenous knowledge and modern farming system is achieved at farmers' visualisation and reach.

Looking Forward to the Next Three Years:
We will have completed at least 10 other up country mills in Uganda and would have assisted 100 other farmer groups to plan their activities holistically in our bid to scaling up. Our results will be disseminated to other neighbouring country and globally on the website. We may fundraise during this period.

Contact Information:
Ssebina Benon  Ssalongo
East and Central Uganda Integrated Farmers' Association (ECUIFA)
P. O. Box 70770, Kampala
Uganda
Tel: 071 844431
Email: ssebinabenon@yahoo.co.uk