Fred Nangoli
1 July 2009
Kampala — In yet another bid to eliminate poverty among the poor, the Vice President, Prof. Gilbert Bukenya, has gone into organic vegetable farming with the aim of encouraging the peri-urban youth to take up the initiative for better livelihoods.
Bukenya who is presently experimenting on 18 different types and varieties of vegetables on a 16 by 16 meter piece of land says one can earn up to sh3m from growing vegetables per season on that size of land.
"You can earn up to sh3.5m per season by growing lettuce and about sh12m per year," Bukenya said as he worked on his experimental farm in Lwantama, Kakiri over the weekend.
The professor of human medicine is experimenting on cabbage varieties of red cabbage, globe master, Baraka F1, F2 and F3 and Chinese cabbage. He is also experimenting on lettuce, Swiss chard, squash, radish, cauliflower, chill, okra, bugga, sukuma wiiki, onions and tomatoes.
"I have found out that from a plot of 16 by 16 meters, I am growing over 1000 stems of cabbage and I will earn over sh1m per season and about sh3m per year," he revealed.
"Because it is now a dry season, I am using a simple irrigation. Irrigation can keep one in farming all the year round," he adds.
He says he is experimenting organic vegetable growing because he wants to the youth to engage in vegetable growing and exploit both the local and export market. He says organic vegetable farming suites the peri-urban youths who do not have enough land.
"I want them in areas surrounding Kampala city to pick up this initiative and make a quick income by selling vegetables to markets and supermarkets in and around the city," he stressed. But to keep into vegetable growing all year round, the vice-president says there is need for irrigation especially during the dry season.
"We must establish large irrigation schemes and be in position to grow these vegetables all year round," he says. Bukenya says the initiative is his new programme for the youth because it does not need a lot of money and land to start on.
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Look into container gardening. A very large amount of food can be grown that way on very little water, right where you need it most! Even for an obligate carnivore like me, there is no wealth without vegetables.