Desire Farm

Ample food and gainful employment will help break the cycle of poverty.

In order to sustain the School Meals program, we realized we needed to reduce our overall cost of food. Our holistic solution was to create our own farm. As an added benefit to the community, when the farm is at full capacity, it will employ up to 60 residents, including recent graduates of both schools.

Desire Farm, which sits on 17.2 acres of farmland, was developed in 2009 in the hopes of producing enough grain, vegetables, meat, and milk to at least provide for the children at Nyaka and their immediate families. It took a total of 700 days of labor to get the farm up and going: 200 days for stumping and clearing, 400 days for tilling, and 100 days for planting.

Grandmothers and day laborers care for the farm which is managed by Farm Manager Florence. They are paid 2,500 Ugandan shillings per day ($1.30) which is considered a good wage. The only tools they have at the farm are machetes which they call “pangas” and hoes that are as heavy as an American pick ax. Despite the lack of modern tools, they harvested 10 acres of dry beans, sweet potatoes, and maize during the first season. This harvest yielded 2.5 tons of maize and 400 kg of dry beans.

Most of the surplus product will be sold to civil servants at the district headquarters, Kambuga Hospital, to our employees, other local schools and churches, and our guest house visitors. Sales will help support ongoing teacher and staff training workshops.

Vehicle for learning and employment

Desire Farm is also one of the most critical elements of the Vocational Training Program. It will be an income producing enterprise and a center for the graduates of Nyaka and Kutamba who do not attend secondary school.

Our hope is that Desire Farm continues to grow as a hot bed of innovation and agricultural learning. For a fee, local farmers come to the Farm to learn seeding, transplanting, grafting, fertilizing, and weeding techniques. They also gain access to valuable information about how to farm with improved hybrid seeds, ordinarily a risky initiative for uneducated farmers.

Desire Farm still faces significant challenges due to weather and the remote locaiton of the plot.  Our goal is to have a greater number of livestock, to construct shelters for the produce and animals, to purchase and use a milling machine, to build a store, and employ more modern methods of farming.

To make a donation and help support the continued development of Desire Farm, please click here.