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Kween, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Farmers in Kween District have applauded Uganda Breweries for providing a ready market for barley which has boosted their household incomes, saying that this has improved their livelihoods.
They said this during an interaction with officials from Uganda Breweries on Friday last week. Patrick Mangusho, a barley farmer on his ten acres in Kaplamai, Tuikat Sub-County Kween district, said that through barley farming, he completed his university education in 2017.
“Barley farming has had a great impact on me as a person. First of all, to complete my university I used money from this crop. I have also been able to help in lending money to my fellow farmers whenever there’s a financial crisis during the growing of crops. I had no option other than lending to other farmers.
Mangusho added: “I went to the extent of buying barley and other crops from other farmers to expand my business. Like currently, I buy onions and Irish potatoes to sell in Northern Uganda. I have been able to expand my land, build a house, and marry my wife. We now have two children together.”
Difas Kiplangati, a farmer from Kere village, explained, “Barley has helped us so much. I never had money to take my children to school, but since I started supplying the crop to Uganda Breweries, I can take them to the best schools in Kapchorwa and take care of their needs.”
In addition, since starting his barley farming three years ago, he has been able to buy a plot of land, which he said he will soon start developing. Regarding his earnings, he said whenever he sells barley, he roughly earns about UGX 4m-5m per season. This translates into about UGX 10m per year because a year has two seasons.
“We face a challenge of pests and diseases. The challenge we have here is about bad roads, and I appeal to our leaders to intervene.”
Speaking to barley farmers, Andrew Kilonzo, the Uganda Breweries Managing Director said that the company is committed to connecting with the community where it operates from.
“We work with the farmers to produce the raw materials; we take the raw materials to the factory, industrialize and produce certified products that regulators have approved, market it and we come back to farmers for more input.”
Kilonzo said that Uganda Breweries sources 95% of the raw materials locally, and the volumes sourced would increase if the regulators could address the challenge of illicit alcohol which is creating unfair competition with regulated alcohol.
“65% of alcohol consumed in Uganda is informal/ illicit; if the regulators were able to enforce the selling and access to only regulated and certified alcoholic products, we could easily triple the volumes of raw materials that we source and that could have a positive impact to the farmers massively. There’s an opportunity to stop the harmful illicit alcohol which is being commercialized.”
Under the program dubbed Farm for Success, Uganda Breweries provides a ready market to our farmers, over 35,000 farmers. In the last financial year, the company paid over UGX 38 billion to smallholder farmers across the country, 13 billion of which was for barley, and the rest for sorghum and maize.
The program also allows achieving other socio-economic impacts, such as women's empowerment, the opening up of rural communities, and forward and backward linkages in the agriculture value chain, such as input sales, transportation and microfinance products among others.
