Stories

By Raymond Tumuhaire

In September 2019, I joined the YEP programme (Water) with RAIN (a brand of Aidenvironment) as a project officer. As a Young Expert my main role consists of coordination and ground implementation of the project. The Green Future Farming project, as it is called, aims at providing learning on how productive livelihoods and local agricultural business opportunities can be created. This is done by combining investment in:

(1) Landscape restoration (landscape-level soil erosion control; enabling forest management and tree growing on-farm; and promoting non-wood-based sources of fuel for cooking)

(2) Regenerative agriculture (providing training in agronomy; initiating the conversion of organic waste to organic fertilizers at small and commercial scale)

(3) Strengthening local value chains, especially specialty arabica coffee (providing equipment for coffee processing, drying, and storage, as well as water harvesting, on a subsidy & loan basis; linking farmers to markets in Uganda and abroad. 

Contribution to SDG 13

The project contributes directly towards SGD 13 ‘taking urgent action to combat climate change and it’s impacts’ As a YEPper, my work to contribute towards achieving the goal and its related targets, this is being realized through;

• Engaging farmers to shift from traditional farming methods towards climate resilient methods of agroforestry. Through the project, we are looking at developing the coffee value chain. Our aim through the project is to increase coffee quality and support farmers to sustainably manage their coffee gardens. I’m playing a central in engaging farmers and motivating them to grow trees on their farms to improve their coffee as well control the impacts of climate change.

• Engaging farmers to adopt to use of organic manure to boost coffee production. We are piloting the use of biogas as a way to promote organic farming. The biogas digestor produces bio- slurry that is applied on coffee trees.  By so doing, farmers are starting to see the benefits of biogas since it also acts an alternative energy source. When put to scale, pressure will reduce on the existing forests which are seen as main source of fuel for cooking. This contributes towards the combating deforestation the main driver of climate change.