Buliggwanga’s secret for rich harvest

Athanasius Buliggwanga has strong reasons for being a farmer. The 78-year-old widower who owns a mixed farm of about seven acres at Bbulamazzi near Kalisizo Town in Kyotera District, is not only a hard working organic farmer but he is also a source of knowledge to many aspiring farmers and natural environment protection advocates. 

His journey 

“Certainly my earlier motive was to return to my home area, make a living as a farmer, and to take closer care of my aging parents. I used to be self-employed, in Kampala where I owned a drug shop. But I was also beginning to realise that many people around here were living comfortable lives as farmers.  So I made up my mind, some 27 years ago, to become a farmer too,” says Buliggwanga.

He was originally trained as a nurse at Nsambya Nursing School and had worked in a number of missionary hospitals before he set up the drug shop.
He was particularly inspired by one successful farmer, Charles Mukasa Nsimbinungi, of Ninzi Village, near Kalisizo Town.

Different farming activities 

His farm is a mixture of different farming activities. He is a beekeeper, a cattle keeper, a coffee farmer, a banana farmer, a tree farmer, and a vegetable farmer, among other things. 

About an acre of his farm is devoted to eucalyptus trees. There are strong tall eucalyptus trees growing and once in a while he harvests some of them which are cut into timber and sold.

In the eucalyptus forest he keeps beehives. “Every crop farmer should create a friendship with bees,” he says. “They are responsible for pollination and I believe they are mainly the reason my crops, particularly coffee, are so high yielding.” 

On farm best practices 

Indeed at the time of Seeds of Gold’s visit all his coffee trees were heavily laden with red ripe coffee that was due for harvest. It is not his practice to bend the trees to pick the coffee because, as he says, it must be a cause of much pain to the trees. 
“It is the reason I always use a ladder to pick the coffee. It is better to give the coffee tree its freedom instead of exerting pressure and pain on it after it has been so heavily burdened with fruit for months,” says Buliggwanga. 

He is also a natural environment conservationist who has chosen never to use manufactured agricultural chemicals. 

“I used to apply herbicides to kill weeds but I soon realised that in the process of doing so I also killed some of the traditional vegetables that grow naturally here among what we refer to as weeds,” he says.

He mentioned such vegetables as jjobyo, nsugga, embooge, bbugga, katunkuma, and a few others. 

For fertilisers to nourish the soil he resorted to keeping cattle and planting lots of fruit trees such as mangos, avocado and some traditional fruit trees, such as nsaali. 

“The fruit trees are not only good because of their fruits, they provide shade to protect my other crops from extreme sunshine and also drop leaves which turn into manure to replenish the soil,” he says. His wife is dead and quite near her grave he has purposely planted a tree. “It provides a shed, as you can see, and protects the grave of my beloved wife from the scorching sun,” he explains.

Makes own manure 

Buliggwanga who employs a few casual employees makes composite manure out of the weeds and livestock droppings on his farm. He applies the manure on the crops but sometimes he has some for sale. The cows’ shade is constructed in such a way that all the cattle urine flows into a pit from where he collects it once in a while for application on the farm as manure. He has a vegetable garden not very far from the cow shed where he grows salads, carrots, sukuma wiki, cabbages, and a whole range of other vegetables. 
Harvests rainwater 
The rainwater from the cowshed roof is collected in an underground tank close by and some of the water is used for irrigation in the vegetable garden. He has a good reason for producing different items on his farm. If he has no coffee to sell during some months of the year he has other products such as avocado, vegetables, mangos, some honey, bananas, and vegetables ---- crops that are not seasonal since his financial needs are not seasonal.

What makes him special farmer 

He has a number of reasons why he is so passionate about farming. “It is my last card,” he says. “Farming is my current job and source of income right now. If I lose this job at this age, where else do I expect to find another job?” His children are all employed elsewhere in different parts of Uganda but he does not want to depend on them all the time for financial support.

His other reason for farming is the emphasis by the Buganda Kingdom as the most effective way to reduce poverty and food insecurity. “Here on my farm I feel so food secure,” he says. “I grow crops such as beans and groundnuts. I produce tubers such as cassava and yams. I have bananas, fruits, and vegetables, not to mention milk from my cows. The farm therefore provides not only sufficient nutritious food for me but also plenty of excess for sale. When I lived in Kampala I would need cash to buy any of the items that I produce in plenty right here. Even the firewood to cook my food is easily obtained here because some of my crops are actually trees. We keep pruning the trees by cutting off some branches which become firewood for us to use.”

Buliggwanga also says that he opted to be a farmer in order to cope with the changing times. “When the economy worsens and commodity prices become higher, the farmer also raises the prices of his products,” he says. “Other people in salaried employment cannot just suddenly have their wages raised to cope with the escalating commodity prices. So today I can afford sugar, beef, and many other items because I also have goods to sell at higher prices.”

Advice 

His advice to other farmers is that they should always “give back something to the farm to keep the soil nourished.” If anything is sold and some money has been earned it is good to invest some of the money in for example purchasing a cow or more bee hives. He also said for farmers that don’t keep livestock it is a good idea to regularly invest in purchasing organic manure.