ODI KAL LIMITED

Agriculture contributes 63% to Uganda’s GDP employing over 70% of the population with national population current standing at 47,101,246 million people at 3.23% growth rate. The rise in population has proportionately increased a demand in quality and safe food supply, pushing smallholder farmers to intensify their agricultural production, increasing the use of agrochemicals. The lack of adequate knowledge on safe agrochemical use has seen smallholder farmers unconsciously use excessive agrochemicals to boost their productive in order to meet the growing food supply demand. As a result, their cost of production as shot up, lowering their profit margin with 65% of the agrochemicals found to remain in the food systems and ecosystem

Uganda is experiencing an increasing demand for food supplies which has led to agricultural intensification sparking off the excessive and non-regulated use of agrochemicals by smallholder farmers to increase their crop yields to meet the growing food demands.

90% of the over 18,000 smallholder farmers in Kiryandongo district lack adequate knowledge on safe agrochemical use which is has been exacerbated by increased commercialization of the agricultural input sector by dealers who are focused on sales with little efforts dedicated towards farmer sensitization and adherences to regulations.  This has resulted to approximately 65% of agrochemical residue contamination of food supplies and agricultural ecosystem which has lowered the food quality, crop yield, harm to human health and destroying the natural biodiversity. Excessive use of agrochemicals in vegetable production in Kiryandongo district has seen farmer register 80% losses due to chemical burns and 55% decrease in maize yield resulting from increased soil acidity due to excessive fertilization.

Agrochemicals have contributed to global food security but there is to mitigate their advance harm to human health and the environment. 

A community agribusiness hub farmer running two training sites will be established in Kiryandongo District. Our training approach will leverage on our agricultural professional expertise, farmer-to- farmer training and demonstration approaches in dissemination the necessary trainings, information, knowledge and skills to smallholder farmers. Demonstration plots of 0.1 ha will be established for mainly cultivated vegetables and food crops within the farming community Kiryandongo district. Smallholder farmers will be taken through an interactive and knowledge exchange training process on safe agrochemical handling and integration of integrated pest management practice to regulate agrochemical use without compromising their crop yields.

Trainings will be conducted on a phase basis dependent on the different crop production stage enabling farmers to understand, appreciate and adopt the recommended practices of agrochemical selection, application, storage and disposal. 

Community agribusiness hub, is an approach that extends agricultural and agribusiness services from the urban settles down to the smallholder farmers, offering them the opportunity to frequently have access to services and solution to agricultural related issues.

Field based agronomist and farmer representatives are constantly training on new developments in the agricultural industry and are in turn tasked to use demonstrational trainings to disseminate this to smallholder farmers with farmer representatives using farmer-to-farmer approaches to reach out to far end to reach farmers.

Our solution targets smallholder farmers in Kiryandongo District who are striving to boost their crop yields and double they production volumes. Most of the smallholder farmers are engaged in subsistence farming on leased out farmland between 0.4 ha to 0.6 ha, greatly limiting their cultivation space, crop selection and income. but are being constrained by limited access to technical agricultural knowledge.

Smallholder farmer have limited access to agricultural training and agricultural information contributing to low productivity threatening farmer incomes and food supply.

In Kiryandongo district, 10% of these farmers have access to agricultural extension services with the remaining 90% deprived due to financial and geographical constraints. The agricultural services being provided are poor and inadequate for farmers due to poor staffing levels as only one extension staff is assigned to averagely 850 smallholder farmers, severely limiting one-on-one farmer interaction. This coupled with no agricultural advice from agricultural input dealers, counterfeit agricultural inputs and changing ecosystems farmers are drawing deeper into poverty and food insecurity due to high cost of production, low quality food, dropping crop yields and increased product market rejection due to high agrochemical contamination.

Through our community agribusiness hub approach, we diligently assess their production challenges and root causes enabling use to develop a tailored training approach in safe chemical use and IPM for improved agricultural production.

This will increase the number of smallholder farmers accessing agricultural extension service and strengthen their capacity to improve their productivity without comprise food quality and ecosystem diversity. Increased production will directly boost food supply, contributing to increased household income and employment in farming community of Kiryandongo District.

We are addressing the problem of excessive and non-regulated agrochemical use by smallholder farmers in Kiryandongo district which has led to high agrochemical food contamination and pollution of the environment. This is not only increasing farmer cost of production, but crippling efforts geared towards sustainable agricultural and agribusiness development in the district.

Our community agribusiness hub offers target trainings on safe agrochemical use and integrated pest management practices to farmers, which will believe is a right step in addressing the above identified problem. Therefore, equipping farmers with the right skill set and knowledge to boost their production of quality food without destroying their environment for sustained agricultural productivity.

In our operations while conducting commercial market-led maize production of smallholder farmers in Kiryandongo district in partnership with Kimtex Holding SMC ltd. We discovered that 95% of the agricultural input had no agricultural background yet their agricultural advice was the only source of agricultural information smallholder farmers could rely on. This created a big concern to us since the information given out to farmers was inaccurate but just intended secure more sales for the Agro-dealers. As a result, we planned and designed the community agribusiness hub model using 75 smallholder farmers in Opok village, Mutunda S/C for our pilot run.

We established a farmer training site of 0.6 ha comprised of six demonstration plots with farmer learning shade and two farmer representatives. This was used to run our test project before we can scale it up to benefit more farmers within a wider geographical area beneficial to the community.

Our project management team consists of personnel from different backgrounds with over eight years work experience, precise subject matter knowledge and skills to execute project work. Project team members participate at different project phases based on the activity skill need and comprises of the following individuals who have been per and parcel of the community agribusiness hub design, planning, implementation and management for the past 12 months.

Mr. George Kidega: Agricultural and Rural innovation specialist: Country Manager

National Programme Coordinator: Shakira Nagujja

Mr. Daniel Nanghaka: ICT – CONSULTANT

Mr. Ronald Oloya: Accounting and Procurement officer

Mr. Moses Onyanga: Agricultural Enterprise Development specialist

Mrs. Abalo Fiona: Records and Information manager.

Mrs. Tinah Namukwana: Environmental Management Specialist.

Mr. Amo Allan: Extension and Farmer school specialist.

Mrs.Rukia Joan: Agricultural Input dealer Representative.

The project team provide timely and accurate accountability of the project operations, achievements and submit a report to the organisational board form performance evaluation and decision making.

The Solve prize money will be used to enhance our capacity to roll out our project second phases to deliver the community agribusiness hub model to wider geographical area archiving results and outputs that benefit 3,500 farmer households within Kiryandongo Districts. The funding will facilitate all our operations regarding project implementation, monitoring, evaluation, reporting and communication. In this second project phase, funds will be broken down as follows: 10% administrative costs and 90% recurrent expenditure (operations). The operations include trainings, establishing 2 Farmer Field Schools: procuring climatic resistant seeds and creating linkage to markets.  This will enable us to contributes to improved smallholder farmers livelihoods in rural Ugandan communities.

Our multidimensional vision is aligned to different sectors and requires long-term planning for long-term transformation in farming communities. Through this strategy we aim to achieve: the social inclusion of farmers and general population by providing access to collaborative agronomic and agribusiness training, long-term sustain market-led farming contracts, increased farmer productions, incomes and the mitigation of negative impacts that agricultural production and consumption of energy may have on human health and environment including reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. 

We are opened to partnership with any organization, institute or company  with whom we have a shared vision. The goal is to build a strong and beneficial partnership that enables both parties to achieve set objectives with long lasting impacts in the community and world.

ODI KAL uses innovative models and approaches to tackle critical, social and environmental issues. This includes the application of market based entrepreneurial strategies and technology to become part of a global solution. We strive to meet unfulfilled social needs through creating value in four key areas:

People on the Move (PoM); We support interventions that work towards reconstruction and monitoring of forced population displacements, mass movements and migrations

Rule of Law (RoLa); Creating an environment where accountability, just laws, open and transparent governments and access to justice is improved.

We are constantly looking for ways to positively impact different societies in Uganda and refugee society is inclusive.

People on the Move (PoM); We support interventions that work towards reconstruction and monitoring of forced population displacements, mass movements and migrations. We empower refugees to have the capacity to earn income for a better livelihoods.

Women’s Economic Empowerment (WoEE); Investing in gender equality and women’s rights in order to enable them to succeed and advance financially – for inclusive economic growth.

This one of our area of work, and we are currenting offering legal aid and financial literacy training to women in urban settle who are running SMEs

We have two categories that align to Minderoo  Prize 

Conservation and Preservation (CaP); We contribute to actions aimed at protecting the environment and those that promote the sustainable use and management of natural resources including wildlife, water, air and earth deposits.

Agriculture and Agribusiness development; (AA); Impacting Individuals and society through extending agribusiness practices and enterprise that contributes towards the generation of household income.