By Joshua Kato
After 120 days, most varieties are now ready for harvesting if one is doing dry grain. To further dry it on the farm, you need another 20 days.
To get good quality grain, harvest the maize and store it in a proper storage facility that is hoisted by at least a feet off the ground. There are also good cereal storage bags on the market at the moment.
-Remember that leaving the grain in the rain may lead to rotting which then causes a dangerous element called aflatoxins. These are deadly if ingested by both humans and livestock.
According to the Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS), at least 30% of the flour that was stocked under COVID-19 relief had these elements.
This is how you earn more by adding value
You need 100kgs of maize grain to produce 70kgs of fine maize flour. If you sell each kilogram of flour at sh1,500, this means that you get around sh105,000 from the 70kgs. Comparatively, if you had sold these 100kgs as grain at sh500 each, you would have got sh50,000 from the same.
In addition to the 70kgs of fine flour, you also retain at least 20kgs of maize bran. With each kilogram going for sh700, this means that this is an additional sh14,000 from the flour, making a total of sh119,000 from the 100kgs of maize.
Additionally, from every 100kgs of maize grain, there is 25kgs of maize bran after the flour is milled. At sh700 per kilogram, this gives a farmer an additional sh17,500 for every 100kgs.
Even if a farmer does not have his own flour mill, he can take the grain to the nearest mill. At the mills, a kilogram of flour is milled at between sh150-sh200. This means that if a farmer has 100kgs, he spends sh20,000 on milling the flour.
This means that his profit reduces by sh20,000 to around sh90,000. This is still much better than selling raw grain.
On average according to Ministry of Agriculture Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF) statistics, on average, an acre of maize produces 800kgs in Uganda.
This means if a farmer sells each kilogram at sh500, then he can only earn sh400,000 from his efforts. However, if he added value to the same, he would earn sh90,000 for every 100kgs, which adds up to around sh900,000.
This means that if a farmer with 15acres sells his maize as flour, he would have 21tons of fine flour and at least sh31m in addition to earnings from maize bran.
