NTUNGAMO– Justus Tayebwa, 31, a resident of Nyaruhama village, Nyongozi parish, Itojo Nyamukana town council, Ntungamo district does not regret why he ventured into the business of growing pineapples, stating that it has brought him prosperity.
Tayebwa who is passionate about farming has intensified commercial pineapple growing in Nyamukana town council where he is revered as an agripreneur.
“By the time I was born, pineapples were taken as like a cash crop here, so if you were a youth and had the guts to develop, you would plant a garden of pineapples,” he says.
Humble beginnings
“When my father passed on in the 1990s, life became hard. The option for me was to go to the streets to beg. Fortunately, I was saved by a businessman in the neighbourhood who employed me on his truck that transported pineapples to Kampala for years,” Says Tayebwa.
Looking at the profit margins his boss was earning from the pineapple business, Tayebwa would be convinced that growing pineapples would bring him prosperity.
He began with a few plants on an acre of land he inherited from his late father. “I started with the land that my late father gave me, but had to beg for the seedlings from the other pineapple farmers. The fact that I was an orphan I never had any support. I did everything by myself,” he said, adding that his first harvest helped him to construct a small house.
Expansion
Tayebwa has been able to buy three pieces of land at over Shs 100 million where he has established pineapples, coffee, and banana plantations among others.
“From an acre of a garden, I have now bought 15 acres of land using money from my pineapple business. I first bought one at Shs 75mlnn, another one at Shs 25mln and the other at Shs 3mln,” he says, adding that he has earned about 3.8mln from the eight acres of pineapples in four months as he sold about 6,400 of the fruits.
Building a bigger house
Tayebwa says he built a residential house for his family using some of the money earned from pineapple growing in the last 10 years.
Juice factory
Tayebwa has also injected about Shs 100mln into a mini factory to make pineapple juice. “Pineapple growing has brought me from far, I now have a juice-making factory and within one month,” he says.
Job creation
Currently, he employs about 50 workers and plans to expand his pineapple juice factory. He hopes to buy start more pineapples from other farmers in the area to feed his factory, although he says he needs support from government in terms of expansion and value addition.
Challenges
Tayebwa complains low pineapple prices in the area have resulted in losses, not to him only but to other farmers as well. “When the prices kept on reducing, I developed the idea to make juice from pineapples so that I reduce the losses on the sale of unprocessed fruits,” he says.
https://thecooperator.news/ntungamo-pineapple-farmers-cry-out-to-govt-as-factory-stops-operations/
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