Ndiva Jalia is 31 years married youth with three children in Futibutangwa cell, Rwengoma Ward, Fort Portal Tourism City. She is an urban farmer and one of those early adopters already implementing their plans. Together with her household they drew and finished their integrated farm plan which they presented during youth training meetings for possible improvements. After fine-tuning the drawing of her plan, she embarked on implementation where she decided to start with vegetable production for home consumption and poultry for income generation.
Before the training, Jalia had poultry structures with no birds because, after her husband’s support in
construction, she lacked the money to buy start-up chicks and technical knowledge on how to raise them. JESE/IDP provided her with 200 one-day-old kroiler chicks, vegetable seeds (spinach, carrots, beetroot, eggplants, and Sukuma wiki among others), and technical advisory services, especially in urban farming, business development skills, and PGS among others.
After one month of raising the provided chicks, Jalia recognized some male chicks within the flock. She sold 100 of them at Ugx 1,000,000 and made a profit of Ugx 560,000 after subtracting Ugx 4,400 from the cost of raising each bird. She used the money to buy more than 200 chicks each at UGX. 2000 and spent the rest of the money on personal needs.
Jalia sells her mature chicken after every 4 months (at Ugx 30,000 – Ugx 40,000 per bird). Jalia also supplies a variety of vegetables to the neighboring community where she earns an average of Ugx 30,000 per week. This has enabled her to have a continuous flow of income to cater for other needs especially feeding and treatment of her birds as well as provision of some basic needs in addition to what the husband brings.
“The use of IFP has promoted cooperation among members of the family as we are all working together to achieve our future home status. The approach has reduced our expenditure drastically because we use chicken waste as manure, some vegetables as food for the family as well as chicken feeds.” Jaila said.
We hope that when we focus on our plan, we will continue producing food sustainably. This will address food security and stable income. We use chicken waste as manure to boost soil fertility to reduce costs. More other integrations according to plan will enable efficient utilization of available resources hence reducing costs of production. For example, rabbits and goats added to urban farms will provide manure and pesticides for their vegetables whereas unutilized vegetable leaves to feed the rabbits.
Jalia and the entire family are very grateful to the Mpanga Super Farmers Program for the support being given which has and is continuing to change their lives. The family now has safe vegetables in the household in time for consumption.