Mushroom growing is one of the attractive farming ventures based on the fact that it requires less initial capita to start yet very profitable.
Abel Kiddu, one of the Vision Group’s Best Farmers Competition winners of 2018, is a renowned mushroom farmer and the director of African Mushroom Growers at Luvuuma zone in Makindye municipality in Kampala. He says one can never go wrong the mushroom growing, especially when you venture into value addition.
Kiddu was one of the facilitators at the 2022 Harvest Money Expo trainings at Kololo Airstrip.
He says throughout the mushroom production value chain including; making gardens, processing spawn, growing mushrooms, making products like; powder and wine making, one can choose to venture into any stage and still make money.
Capital
Kiddu says he started with shs200,000 in 2010 that he used to buy cotton husks, seeds, firewood and disinfectants. He made 120 gardens. He went on increasing the stock capital, and by 2018 he had 15,000 gardens harvesting over 100kg a day.
Currently, he has 30,000 gardens, harvesting over 200kg a day in addition to 200 out-growers that supply him with over 300kg a day.
“To start mushroom farming, one needs at least 100 gardens that will cost shs300,000. You will harvest 1.5kg from each garden in three months, meaning you will harvest 150kg. Sold at an average of sh5,000 per a kilogrammd while still fresh, you will earn shs750,000,” he says.
Adding value
Mushrooms have many nutritional values, making them a raw material for making a number of products ranging from foodstuff like sausage, drinking powder, wines and cosmetics.
Dried: Drying mushrooms is one of the ways of adding value and earning much. To get one kilogramme of dried mushrooms, you need to dry 10kg. A kilogramme of dried mushroom is sold at shs70,000, which means that one will earn additional sh20,000 from sh50,000 you would have earned from the 10kg of fresh ones.
Powder: After drying, you may make powder from the mushrooms. The powder can be taken with hot water with or without sugar. Kiddu sells a 100gm tin at sh10,000, which means you will earn as high as sh100,000 from a kilogramme of powder mushroom.
Wines: In 2019, Kiddu started making wines from mushrooms. To make 20 litres of wine, one needs about 5kg of fresh mushrooms.
“However, to make business, you need to process over 200 litres of wine where you will need about 40kg in addition to the other ingredients like wheat and yeast. You will start selling wine at one year, where a 300ml bottle will go for sh20,000. Therefore, from 20 litres, we get 66 bottles, meaning that we earn over shs1.3m. We have 10 cans, each containing 240 litres at different stages,” Kiddu says.
Cosmetics: Kiddu produces jelly mixed with mushroom powder that his family is using. He explains that, mushrooms have ingredients that make the skin smooth, soft and healthy. A 150g tin goes for sh6,000.
