By Joseph Bahingwire
Piggery farmers in Kigezi sub region are set to benefit from improved pig variety after the government through the Microfinance Support Center launched a sh 150m piggery demonstration farm in Rukungiri district.
According to security minister Jim Muhwezi who presided over the launch of the project last week, the initiative is aimed at enabling people who were formerly cattle keepers to diversify to piggery due to the growth in population that has deprived the former cattle keepers of enough land to rear cattle.
He said that the introduction of improved varieties of piggery will enable the farmers to diversify and improve their incomes to supplement the declining numbers of cattle in the Kigezi sub region
The project is being run in partnership between the Microfinance Support Center and the Rukungiri Produce Dealers’ union as part of the MSC efforts to support diversification to guarantee incomes among farmers that includes promoting piggery projects, poultry, and rabbits by setting up mini breeding centers.
“This project is complimenting other government programmes such as Emyooga, the Parish Development model and other programmes that the government has introduced to help people get out of poverty. I call upon the public to embrace and support this demonstration farm because it will enable them to get piglets bread in their environment which allows for higher chances of survival,” Muhwezi stated.
He further appealed to the public to support all the government programmes including Emyooga and PDM and called for mindset change among the public to enable them put the money to the intended use so as to get rid of poverty.
The Minister emphasized the need to fight poverty from the families noting that 39 per cent of the families in Uganda still live on production for consumption and not commercial production.
“Government wants to see every Ugandan involved in commercial production that can enable them to have some income so that everybody can join the cash economy. So, I thank the members of Rukungiri Produce Dealers Union for supporting government efforts by supporting the community to bring everyone in the cash economy,” he noted.
He appealed to the public to use the demonstration farm to learn more about piggery farming and get piglets to rear and get out of poverty.
Boaz Tuhumure, the MSC Zonal Manager for Kigezi sub region noted that the reason for the piggery demonstration project is to support communities in Kigezi sub region by providing them with high quality piglets that grow faster to enable them to get out of poverty.
“When we visited the Rukungiri Produce Dealers Union, we found out that the union was into supporting farmers which encouraged us as MSC to invest our money in this project by giving them seed capital in form of piglets because they had been giving piglets to farmers,” he elaborated.
He explained that they decided to establish a piggery demonstration farm in the area where people could learn better farming practices and at the same time get better quality piglets.
“When we started, we gave out 150 piglets to over sixty groups and then we realized that we should not buy from the market but have our own breeding center. We opened in September 2021 with 120 piglets that have grown to over 700 hundred that have been given to different farmer groups,” he revealed.
Tuhumure noted that they came up with the project because Rukungiri used to be a cattle keeping corridor but with population growth many people could no longer keep cattle because of land fragmentation
“We train them in financial literacy, how to develop a saving culture and also give them funds once they have developed their village saving groups,” he said.
He revealed that the initial investment was sh 150m that was used to buy piglets and construct the housing structures for the piglets. . So far over 600 farmer groups have already benefited.
