Postcard from Uganda – Amazing maize

If you’re expecting to see the red earth of Africa in these foothills of the Mountains of the Moon, think again. A stone’s throw from the Congo border, here in western Uganda the soil is black, rich as truffle, and so densely nutritious that it could be sold as compost. Or as chocolate cake, come to that.

“We don’t need any fertilisers here,” smiles a maize farmer, crumbling the black earth through her fingers, “this is the richest volcanic soil you will ever see.”

I don’t doubt it. And yet, despite the mineral-packed earth, many crops in this district of Kabarole have been planted without success. Disease and poor-quality seeds leave farmers with meagre harvests, in an area where around 70,000 households exist by smallholder farming.

How to grow corn

I’m here to visit a Farm Africa project that is powering up local agriculture so that maize yields match the quality of the earth producing them and the effort put in by those cultivating them. The farmers sow their seeds in the traditional manner – generating sparse harvests. And because they live from one harvest to the next, they have sold their surplus maize immediately after the harvest rather than storing it until prices are higher or working it into more profitable products like flour, bran or bread.

All that’s changing. This three-year Farm Africa project, started this April, will reach about 2,000 families by supporting 60 farmers’ groups. It is targeting women farmers, with the goal of quadrupling the yields they produce. And with drying racks and mobile threshing machines, it is gearing them up to make their crop cleaner and less perishable so it brings in more money after harvest.

Reap what you sow

It’s a truism but you can only reap what you sow. That’s why Farm Africa started by introducing a variety of corn better suited to local conditions, and trained the farmers to sow the seed in rows to enable easier weeding of a better-nourished and better-ventilated crop. The new variety has two seasons, giving two harvests a year, raising an average farmer’s yield from 1,000kg to a healthy 4,000kg a year.

And another truism is waste not, want not. Women farmers in the project make charcoal-substitute briquettes for cooking fires in a brilliant ‘nose to tail’ use for maize. The process was enthusiastically demonstrated for me, against a background of the rainforest it preserves. The women first burned the stripped husks and papery cob sheaths in an oil drum, and then mixed the resulting ash with cornflour and water. The black paste was cranked through a machine, until sausages squidged out. Dried, the pellets can be used or sold as cooking fuel, reducing pressure on the environment and making sure nothing of the crop is wasted after harvest.

Read more about our maize project

By Jane Spence