Project Abraham
The country suffers some main issues in agricultural activities:
- Farms have micro dimensions, mainly run on family basis, and produce a personal income of few USD/day
- Farmers are poorly skilled to improve their farm, mainly trained by experience
- High difficulties on financial credit access that heavily limits the capacity to grow up and improve in quantitative and qualitative terms
Making this farm one of the best can effectively motivate farmers to learn how to improve their own business improving the efficiency of cultivations and how to invest to grow their business
Name
Project Abraham
Dream
Vision
Cooperaration with Masaka Diocese to highly improve its farm through a new biogas plant and an overall renovation up to let it become a model and one of the most modern and efficient farm in Uganda
Whereas
Masaka Diocese is the owner and runs a quite big farm in an area located between towns of Masaka and Mbarara, about 100 km away from Masaka, through its Ssembabule Balunzi Cooperative Company. in the same geographical zone known as Ankole Masaka Dry Cattle Corridor. The Ranch is found in Lwera Local council 1 Kinuuka Sub-County, Lyantonde District. It covers an area of three square miles (3miles2)
Actual farm short assessment is:
780 hectars
Area between Masaka and Mbarara
800 cows and 200 goats
The farm has actually a workforce of 4 administrative and 7 herdsmen, and one of the main issues is that it does not have electricity.
Two
Aspects
The two main intresting aspects related to this particular farm are:
01
Owned
It is owned by a diocese, operated by Caritas in Veritate CiV –USA and its ‘ partners through a cooperative company, so it is not totally profit oriented
02
Potential
It is very big, compared to average size of similar activities in the area, and poorly developed. Thant means that it offers a big potential still unexploited
DESCRIPTION
The project will lead the farm to become one of the best in Uganda
The very basics financials are:
– biogas plant 1.4 million USD
– farm improvements (stables and others) : 400,000 – 550,000 USD
Total cost of project : 1.8 – 2 MUSD
The biogas plant can use all the produced gas to feed an engine to produce electricity. Given the actual size of the herd, the plant can have an electricity production power of about 200 kWe.
The result is an electrical energy yield of approx. 1.569.500 kWh/year.
This electricity can be used to dramatically improve the quality of the dairy products: indeed they are now exposed to rapid degradation due to lack of electricity.
The electricity that exceedes the farm needings can be sold to the grid.
Alongside of electricity production the plant will also produce heat that can be usefully used for the farm needings (hot water, sanification, cleaning etc).
BENEFITS
15 to 50 stable jobs creation, with dramatic improvement of worker’s lifestile (where the average pro-capita income is about 4 USD/day)
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