Help us Plant Out Poverty: Rural Agro-forestry for Poverty Alleviation in Maracha, Uganda

Maracha District is one of the poorest and most densely populated rural districts in Uganda with consequently, fast diminishing tree cover and highly fragmented land with low productivity. SUSE Social Enterprises (to be registered in Uganda as a forprofit social enterprise) will promote small scale agro forestry and vegetable farming at household levels in the district by utilising social marketing tools to ensure uptake and facilitating market access for excess produce. The households will benefit from additional nutritious food uptake and additional sources of income from sale of excess produce and fruits to SUSE grocery shops.

SUSE SE will identify appropriate fruits and vegetables that are best suited for the climate and soils of the district and grow seedlings in its nursery bed and demonstration farm for the same. It will then train a network of Community Agro forestry Workers in each of the parishes/wards of operation who will be the distribution agents for seedlings and provide training and technical support to the village members during the course of growing the trees. They will earn a commission on each sale of tree seedlings as well as by buying excess fruit and vegetable from the farmers at farm gate prices and selling these to the SUSE SE grocery shops that will be established in the neighbouring towns.

Each parish in the district has an average of 500 households. We will recruit new CAWs – one in each parish – every four months and hence cover the whole district comprising 7 sub-counties and 56 parishes in a period of 4.5 years. The CAWs will traverse the parishes marketing the vegetable seeds and tree seedlings at a rate of 250 households per month. We have assumed a conservative acceptance rate of 20%. We will recruit new CAWs every four months and hence cover the whole district comprising 7 sub-counties and 56 parishes in a period of 4.5 years. Each household will be encouraged to plant at least two types of vegetable on 2.5 decimal land and three types of tree seedlings – two fruit trees and one wood tree in the compound. Each month, we expect to sell 200 packets of vegetables seeds and 600 tree seedlings of which a third will be wood trees and two thirds fruit trees. At the end of twelve months, 1,200 households will have planted 3,600 trees in Maracha district, contributing to improved nutrition, additional income and environmental conservation. We will expand the size of the nursery bed after one year and recruit a permanent caretaker for the demonstration farm and nursery bed. The commission based incentive structure for the CAWs will help ensure sustainable increase in the coverage of the parishes without adding huge operational costs. At the end of one year, we will recruit two Sector Specialists (one for vegetables and another for trees) to coordinate the activities of the CAWs and a Business Development Lead to lead the organisation’s market development activities and value addition initiatives.

Your contribution will help us register and start operations by March 2018.