I am Ronald Denye, 29 years old, from Uganda. I do agriculture as business innovatively, and Information Technology (IT) by profession and also an agripreneur.
My project is to add value to Soybean before reaching targeted market. Soybean growing as project is done in the districts of Kiboga and Kyankwanzi part of central Uganda.
From our study, the product has a lot of values to support the community for example crop supports natural soil fertility, high nutrients prevent malnutrition in people, its on high demand, used for making feeds among others including food security in most homes.
The soybean season outputs from farmers range from 29691 – 40,000 kgs depending on the favor of conditions from natural hazards to government policies or stakeholder involvement.
Soybean has two varieties grown, mark soy2n and mark soy3n and each has different requirement during the harvesting and marketing to the clients and k3 takes it all because its easy to be handled by farmers and fetches a bit higher price when ready.
I will achieve this by Farmer Multilevel Leadership (FML) where by will appoint farmer leaders who will be trained with knowledge need to do the value chain handling monitoring the crops from inputs to post harvesting through other area farmers. I will do also supervision, provision of drying materials and extension services towards real market.
Identified the two types of Soybean 2n and 3n which are doing well in the area. Just trying to find out the soil components to other areas by some students from Makerere University which maybe future expansion. Farmers are ready to provide more land / cultivate more acres as long as they fetch high price for the produce and want to work on sustainable value addition giving them win-win situation.
The success of the project will be measured on differences in the farmers and communities around when we get provision of employment on value chain, increased knowledge of stakeholders, quantity and quality of the product through post harvest handling, making M.O.Us with the highly paying market to sell the product and increased social–economic status.
The funds will be divided in phases according to value chain of the product (Soybean) from input to post harvesting.
Phase one:
Time frame: 2 month - Amount $2300
Activity: Farmer and land preparations, database arrangement (Number of farmers, acres to be cultivated and season), Seed Mobilization.
Phase two:
Time frame: 1 month - Amount $1200
Activity: Capacity building to farmer leaders, Seed distribution, structure implementation and follow-ups
Phase three:
Time frame: 2 month - Amount $ 1500
Activity: Capacity building to Soybean checkup and post handling, provision of some materials mostly at storage areas, packaging and marketing
Blog post and pictures submitted by Ronald Denye (Uganda) – dronnie20@gmail.com
The content, structure and grammar is at the discretion of the author only.
This post is published as proposal #45 of “YAP” - our “Youth Agripreneur Project”.
The first selection of the winners will be based on the number of comments, likes and views each proposal gets.
As a reader, you can support this speaker’s entry:
- Leave a comment (question, suggestion,..) on this project in the comment field at the bottom of this page
- Support the post by clicking the “Like” button below (only possible for those with a WordPress.com account)
- Spread this post via your social media channels, using the hashtag: #GCARD3
Have a look at the other “YAP” proposals too!
As a donor, support young agripreneurs and sponsor this unique project. Check out the side column for our current sponsors.
“YAP” is part of the #GCARD3 process, the third Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development.
Well planned!
Thanks Keron
This is a great initiative! Which kind of capacity building are you planning to do with the farmers?
The capacity building to give our farmers will begin from Product understanding, land preparation, planting guidelines like spacing etc, different stages monitoring of plant growth, leadership skills to group leaders, post harvesting and packaging / grading of the product to meet the market demand.
Great initiative! What kind of capacity building will you give to the farmers?
Dear Annasolea many thanks for the reply, I will be giving farmers knowledge of the product as promising project, preparations, leadership in groups, taking care / handling the produce through its stages of growth, quantity uplift and quality control during post harvesting.
Thank you Ronnie for this initiative. Indeed, farmers in Kiboga-Kyankwanzi requires soybean as an enterprise. Since they are livestock farmers, it will help them improve on their livestock farming as soybean is highly needed in feed production. Nevertheless, nutrition levels are still very low in the two districts which can be worked on by utilising soybean consumption at the household level.
Thanks Richardsoybean for your strong comment indeed its true according to the situation stand and how we have to work closely with these farmers / community improving their livelihoods.
Great work Ronnie, could you tell us on the the different levels the farmers will be involved and how you have the concept of value addition fixed within your working frame
The farmers will be involved in all levels of product development as i called it three (3) phases and since they are the main stakeholders, have to understand it from idea composition of product, while answering questions of who, why, when and what. The concept of value addition is to upgrade the production for community / farmers change in terms of social-economic fact. As you know what has been happening when farmers don’t have the system of production can not meet the real value market and thus end up growing for home consumption and little for selling for just an immediate problem solving but not improving the homestead status which is my fight now.
Thanks for this initiative and hope it will add value to the rural community especially the youth.
Its true youth will be engaged in highly on the soybean value chain because are the future replacement of old age labor in the agriculture sector. So they have to learn the indigenous knowledge and integrate it with the innovative knowledge to cover issues of community development, employment will up scaling and adding on social-economic activities after the phases.
It will add value indeed to youth because according to my plan, they complete the value chain of the product.
Thanks Ronnie
This is a brilliant idea. With the structure it certainly will have an impact. More focus should be put on capacity building within areas of building social capital, financial literacy and value addition. These will provide more jobs for the farmers
Nice move Ronnie. What line of soybean value addition are you taking?
Dear Sylvia thanks for the comment, the line of soybean value addition am taking is the grading of improved mak soy 2n and 3n. The best market driven value addition begins form the seed, empowerment of farmers, land preparations and life cycle plant growth kin supervision to post harvesting handling for better quality and quantity assurance.
Very nice proposal Ronald! I especially like how you divided the project in different phases and the “farmers leader” approach. Wish you the best of luck! Congratulations
Thanks Mariola for your beautiful comment and take your blessings.
Great innovation of value addition on multipurpose soybean
Thanks Moses for your comment.
Great idea!
Nuria thanks for taking your time to comment on my innovation idea.