Kampala — DRESSED in a striped shirt, black trousers and gum boots, there is nothing to show that this man prodding at several piglets is the Vice-President of Uganda. He whistles and cracks jokes with his workers and visitors. He talks to his pigs like they are bosom friends. He admires his chickens and feeds his cows.

He likes his vegetables, trees and maize. In fact, he likes everything that goes on his vast farm.

Vice-President Professor Gilbert Bukenya has one of the most organized and planned farms in the country. The farm is located about 2 kms from Kakiri.

Bukenya is an accomplished farmer, but when he talks about farming he also airs a conviction that farming is the road that Ugandans can take out of poverty.

"We have lots of empty land lying across the country, but what are people doing over it?" he pauses, before adding, "Very little at the moment."

When he traverses this country telling Ugandans to embrace agriculture, he is actually preaching what he practices: good business sense, mixing his enterprises, always looking for better technologies, getting personally involved in every aspect of one's farm, and supporting workers.

And he is eager to pass on these lessons to others. "It is not just about me earning from this farm. It is also about other people learning from here," he says.

Indeed, thousands of people visit the farm every year in order to learn about better, but cheap technologies.

At the farm, he discourages young men from selling their land to buy bikes for boda-bodas. "The bike will get old or even become stolen and you will lose out," he says. As seen at his farm, a person can earn as much as sh3m from an acre every three months of the year. "If you have that little land, go for high value crops," he says. High value is not sugar-cane or tobacco, but things like vegetables. Using his own vegetable farm, he explains, "I am going to earn sh2.5-3m from these vegetables next month and I can earn the same amount from the same acre every four months," he says.

To earn a regular income, Bukenya adopted a mixed system of farming. The vast farm, which covers two hills and their valleys, produces almost every agricultural product that can be found in Uganda. There is something for every kind of visitor to see.

"If you keep cows and that is your interest, you come and learn about them, if you keep pigs you learn from the pigs too," he says.

He adds, "As leaders, we must not simply tell Ugandans to grow crops. We should be seen to grow them too because it is much easier for our people to learn from us, than from any other person," he says.

No wonder, the farm is a beehive of activity, a source of employment to many formerly unemployed youth and a learning center.

According to Bukenya, farmers should always take personal interest in their farms. This is why he supervises all the activities on his farm.

"Make sure that you are there to direct the workers. Get involved in the activities of the farm," he says.

The piggery

Bukenya's pigs are housed in well constructed shelters. At the moment, he has 128 adult pigs. "If you look after your pigs well, you can harvest money from them," he says.

Pigs he explains do not need either sunshine or rain. They thrive in a cool, dry environment. Some people claim that pigs smell, but according to Professor Bukenya, they only smell if they are not well looked after. "Pigs can produce twice a year," he beams.

Piglets are sold at between sh50,000 and 100,000 at three months or beyond sh250,000 when they mature.

Fish farm

The Vice-President has more than 7,000 mud-fish and 10,000 tilapia in his ponds, which he personally tends. He carries a life-jacket in his Toyota Hilux pick-up, a private vehicle, whenever he goes to a pond so he can row a small boat over it.

To maximise his gain, he adopted the modern cage farming practice for tilapia. This is a system were a fish pond is divided into several plots, with each plot holding a given number of fish.

At the moment, prices of fish in the country have gone up and the Vice-President is one of the farmers harvesting money from this venture. "I harvest every eight months and sell them," he says. The average price of a 1kg tilapia is sh5,000. There is no shortage of market for the fish, because of the current scarcity.

Cattle

The farm has both hybrid and local breeds. He gets at least 120 litres of milk daily. At sh800 per litre, that translates to around sh100,000 daily. Bukenya explains that for cows to thrive, you need to have grass and essential drugs around. They should be fed well and on time. He has done a bit of modernization on the cattle shade. The grass is cut using a machine. "It eases up work at the cattle shade," he says.

Chickens

The Vice-President keeps more than 5,000 layers. He boasts that he collects at least 45 egg trays daily.

With each going at sh5,000, he earns at least sh6,750,000 monthly from the sales at current market price. His chicken are kept in ordinary, but well kept shelters that an average person could afford. With chicken, cleanliness is paramount, and the inside of his chicken houses are well kept. "I have a market for these eggs in hotels and restaurants," he says.

Crops

The farm has almost every crop you can imagine, including upland rice, which has come to be identified with the Vice-President, as well as bananas, maize, tomatoes, sukuma wiki, and spinach.

"I harvest at least 500 bunches monthly," he says. As with his other products, he sells the bananas mainly to hotels and restaurants. His bananas are unique in a way that he planted part of the shamba on a stony slope, next to his parking area. "It is not common to see bananas growing over stones, but I was able to achieve that," he says. The bananas are well mulched so they can retain water.

In August alone, he expects to harvest vegetables worthy sh2-3m. "Sukumawiki has a market in Uganda at the moment," he says.

It is also sold more expensively than the other vegetables. For example, 15 big leaves cost more than sh2,000. To grow vegetables and maize all year round, Bukenya has adopted partial irrigation at the farm.

The entire system cost around sh16m. But he explains that this is the way to go for Ugandan farmers if endless bouts of famine and hunger are to be made a thing of the past. Overall, the Vice-President has a vision for agriculture in Uganda and he is eager to share it. He oozes with many years of experience in the sector. Though he is a politician, farming is his other love.

Fact-file about farm

Name of farmer: Professor Gilbert Bukenya.

Farm location: Kakiri.

Enterprises: Animals, vegetables, fish farming and crops.

How he started: As a demonstration for others, before he spread it out commercially.