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Pitch

Connecting un employed landless youth and small scale farmers near forests and swamps to wild organic honey production and value chain.


Description

Summary

Currently the remaining forests and swamps in Kyangwali Hoima are in abig risk of depletion due to high rates of swamp reclamation for agriculture and deforestation for charcoal And agriculture. About 83% of youth in Uganda are un employed and have no land yet most of the stake holders target people with land leaving those without land putting alot of pressure on natural resources. Western region of Uganda has had huge oil explorations where we expect more carbon emissions and environmental pollution and climate change. Thats why we embark on our first innovation of connecting unemployed and landless youth to using swamps and forests fir wild organic honey production and value chain while these biodiversities remain in their natural state.

Conserving biodiversity without alternative economic incentives that do not require conversion of ecosystems into agricultural land and charcoal is impossible. Using the iron hand of the law to solve this challenge has failed because of fraud and corruption. However, a community based intervention with economic benefits for the poor population is irresistibly attractive. Our vision: The ultimate vision of LEHAP is to have an efficient, profitable and sustainable honey value chain in which all the actors in Buhaguzi County can maximize their potential and are able to relate to each other in honey business and environment. 

 

 

   

 


Is this proposal for a practice or a project?

Practice


What actions do you propose?

Beekeeping can be used as a development tool, which can contribute to ecological, economic and nutritional development efforts. Our strategy connecting rural unemployed and landless youth in systematic wild organic honey production and linking it to forest and swamp conservation and create a honey value chain (packing honey and wax products).Our Clients:

The project targets people with or without land near forest reserves, swamps or any where since beekeeping does not require fertile land, a large area, much initial capital, hence attractive for unemployed youth without land. We shall work with Government of Uganda to use forest reserves for bee keeping to produce organic honey for these specific youth while preserving them. 

Scalability: 

Apiary replication by local families will take place without significant external financial and chemical inputs. Use of the training programs will attract and equip new members with the skills and capacity to start beekeeping businesses.

Go-to-Market Strategy 

(Our customer acquisition strategy, How we engage people to use our product or services and How we are  going to reach and build a relationship with our customers.

Customer Acquisition:

Retail Outlets:

Special promotions to feature pollen, comb honeyand wax products.- more colorful displays in current shelf space- new labelling and packaging

At the Farm-gate: Signage, display area, labelling and packaging, trade magazines and social media, phone SMS,  Local bee clubs.

Long-term customer relationship:

Ensuring Quality of our certfied organically produced honey that exceeds customer expectations.

Building strong customer lifetime evaluation and building strong customer satisfaction interaction survey.

We  also use face to face coaching and mobile phone(SMS) based coaching, construction of a honey learning and collection center with modern technologies, ideal apiary demonstration site, training room, room for honey collection, information resources like posters, videos and audio, books and any related information. Provision of inputs will be carried out from this site. Since the youth will be making attractive incentives, their attention on subsistance agriculture and charcoal burning will be disrupted and a "One Hive Ten Trees Plan" with free seedlings from our nursery beds will be implemented to the actors with land interested in beekeeping LEHAP will train them in biointensive gardening to create what we call Successional agroforestry systems (SAFS, also "dynamic agroforestry systems") that feature multi-purpose and natural regeneration of trees , bee keeping and many crops, based on natural succession dynamics: Crops and trees are grouped as pioneers, secondary or primary species, depending on their life cycle, to form a composition in which all stories (spatial) and all phases (temporal) are occupied, maximizing density and diversity. Where cacao or coffee is the main crop, a SAFS can start with maize and rice in combination with manioc and pigeon pea, followed by banana and papaya, pineapple, providing shade for slowly growing primary forest species such as cacao, fruit trees, mahogany (currently extincting in the wild), Msizi , Mvule(also extincting), Vanilla and Moringa trees. Timber as a long-term investment dominates the system after 10--15 years, with cacao or coffee in full production. Farmers harvest pioneer species from the first year on. The high diversity provides environmental services like soil regeneration, organic matter accumulation, improved microclimate, and pest control. Management is knowledge intensive requiring regular pruning and selective weeding. Optimal implementation of SAFS can result in high yields from a range of crops without external inputs. Depending on the organization/production level, mechanization is possible. A most important experience is the benefit of land preparation without fire. The advantage of SAFS will be seen after months and encourage farmers to extend learning plots step by step to the whole plantation, then SAFS will offer environment for the rural small scale farmers into production of organic honey and value chain.

 

     


Who will take these actions?

LEHAP will meet with stakeholders in honey business in the Western Uganda (smaller-scale farmers and farmer groups, processors, traders and retailers, development partners, complementary enterprises, input suppliers, service providers), representatives of local Government, business community and other service providers.

 

Importance of stakeholders.

At the heart of these partnerships mentioned above;

LEHAP will work together with Forest authorities (legally allow landless youth to produce wild organic honey in forest reserves) and CBOs (the development sector) and grass-root communities in a symbiotic win-win partnership sustainably.

The business community will provide inputs and market opportunities at the same time.

The honey businesses in western Uganda will provide a platform for learning and experience for our clients.

Dealing with small holder farmers and apiary farming groups will help to introduce conservation of swamps and forests in to their portfolio of apiary farming. They will benefit from the value chain of our venture and our market too.


Where will these actions be taken?

The project is targeting youth and farmers in western Uganda starting with Buhaguzi County which is among the most inhabited counties in Hoima  hence has highest destruction of biodiversities at a rate of 2.3% therefore in lessthan 50 years we shall have these resources depleted if no action is taken urgently and the presence of huge oil explorations will increase climate change. Buhaguzi with 72 villages, 6,345 house holds 21,628 males and 20,703 females' main activity is farming about 77% are small holders and about 83% of these youth are jobless and have no land for their economic activities. The Population pressure, of (over 44,411)refugees from DR. Congo, South Sudan, Rwanda , Burundi internally displaced persons from Northan Uganda (IDPs) and over (2,366 asylum seekers) have 50m2 plots which has over time forced more land fragmentation and exhaustion of soil because of continuous cultivation and more pressure on other resources like, forests leading to their decimation and consequently ruining the entre environment . This project area has many un employed youth and poor farmers who after soil exhaustion together with landless youth  storm forest reserves and swamps desperately for charcoal and lumbering as alternative economic activities for which some lose lives after being shot by forest guards . 

 

 

 


In addition, specify the country or countries where these actions will be taken.

Uganda


Country 2

No country selected


Country 3

No country selected


Country 4

No country selected


Country 5

No country selected


Impact/Benefits


What impact will these actions have on greenhouse gas emissions and/or adapting to climate change?

Wetlands are not nearly as extensive as forests and grasslands, but they hold a lot of carbon, and they filter and clean water, helping build more climate resilience. Preserving wetlands is less expensive than restoring them, but both their conservation and restoration offer excellent and relatively low-cost opportunities for climate mitigation.

 

We can start with what we know: Trees remove a lot of carbon from the atmosphere through the process of photosynthesis, nature’s way of turning waste into value. When trees grow, they use carbon from the atmosphere to build tree trunks, branches, and roots, locking away carbon molecules in solid form. The more trees we grow, the more carbon we remove from the atmosphere, so it should come as no surprise that the cheapest, most effective natural climate solution is reforestation.

 

 

 

In fact, natural climate solutions that include reforestation, managing forests better, swamps and soil conservation practices, will provide up to 37 percent of the needed carbon removal between now and 2030, an absolute must to reach ambitious climate goals. And natural climate solutions can deliver these climate benefits at a low cost: a third of them cost at or below $10 per ton CO2.

 

That’s substantially lower than the estimated social cost of carbon, essentially the potential cost of dealing with carbon emission impacts, from health to environmental and economic (approximately $30 per ton of CO2 emitted). And most natural climate solutions deliver other benefits, including flood mitigation, water filtration, enhancing soil health and productivity, fostering biodiversity, and enhancing the resilience of natural systems. Not bad for $10 per ton CO2.

 

Other low-cost options for climate mitigation include restoring grasslands, reducing fertilizer usage on farms, and planting legumes that can make their own fertilizer (called nitrogen fixers) for our case we in olve actirs wuth land to use natural regeneration in degraded areas called Successional Agroforestry systems(SAFS). Another option is to plant trees into places with little agriculture, which has the added benefit of improving air and water quality and providing habitat for birds for our case we involve actors with land in tree planting using a slogan for sustainability( No tree, No bee, No honey, No

money).

 


What are other key benefits?

Uganda as a country has been using an iron hand to chase youth and encouraging land users to leave 100m between swamps and area of cultivation but due to corruption this has failed and swamps and forests are disapearing at an alarming rate. Our intervention has multiple benefits as below;

1. SOCIAL BENEFIT:The rural unemployed youth often stealing forest and swamp resources for charcoal and poles to sell ilegally are shot dead or imprisoned, family conflict, substance abuse, prostution, gambling and iddle will be self-employed in the honey business and in turn buy their own land.

 

2.WATER: Agroforestry increases soil infiltration and water retention capacity. Swamps also are water filters and reserviours for future water.

3.FOOD SECURITY/NUTRITION: Honey help to sustain a diversified and healthy diet .

4.ECONOMIC/SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: Apiculture will continue to generate income for the actors, improve fotest, swamp and garden pollination.

5.CLIMATE: 

Resilience to climate change, a high absorption of carbon is a side effect of global relevance since our ventute depends on forests and swamps this will create small microclimates and watersheds.

6. BIODIVERSITY: Different living organisms in Swamps and forests will be conserved.


Costs/Challenges


What are the proposal’s projected costs?

One beehive local beehive typically produces 10-14kg of honey per year with few inputs required afterestablishment. One kg of honey in Uganda sells for around Ug Shs 5,000/= (US $3.00). 

 

50 hives can generate between Ug Shs 2,500,000 and 3,000,000/= (US $1,470-$1,760) per year. In a country where the average per capita income is US $325. Beekeeping thus has enormous potential to galvanise the income of poverty stricken local people. Given the projected costs and benefits one beehive would pay 90% of its establishment costs in the first year. With very little maintenance and ongoing labour required after establishment of the hives, apiculture is an extremely cost effective agricultural activity.

 


Timeline

In swamps and forests, impact of conservation will be immediate because human activities will shut down as the project begins and allow regeneration of the biodiversity they had lost.

 

In hot spot biodiversities that had been degraded, we shall  start the bee enterprise as we encourage actors to carry out agroforestry as follows;

Successional agroforestry systems (SAFS, also "dynamic agroforestry systems") feature multi-purpose and natural regeneration of trees , bee keeping and many crops, based on natural succession dynamics: Crops and trees are grouped as pioneers, secondary or primary species, depending on their life cycle, to form a composition in which all stories (spatial) and all phases (temporal) are occupied, maximizing density and diversity. Where cacao or coffee is the main crop, a SAFS can start with maize and rice in combination with manioc and pigeon pea, followed by banana and papaya, pineapple, providing shade for slowly growing primary forest species such as cacao, fruit trees, mahogany (currently extincting in the wild), Msizi , Mvule(also extincting), Vanilla and Moringa trees. Timber as a long-term investment dominates the system after 10--15 years, with cacao or coffee in full production. Farmers harvest pioneer species from the first year on. The high diversity provides environmental services like soil regeneration, organic matter accumulation, improved microclimate, and pest control. Management is knowledge intensive requiring regular pruning and selective weeding. Optimal implementation of SAFS can result in high yields from a range of crops without external inputs. Depending on the organization/production level, mechanization is possible. A most important experience is the benefit of land preparation without fire. The advantage of SAFS will be seen after months and encourage farmers to extend learning plots step by step to the whole plantation. 

The following will be the general project benefits;

1. SOCIAL BENEFIT:The rural unemployed youth often stealing forest and swamp resources for charcoal and poles to sell ilegally are shot dead or imprisoned, family conflict, substance abuse, prostution, gambling and iddle will be self-employed in the honey business and in turn buy their own land.

2.WATER: Agroforestry increases soil infiltration and water retention capacity. 

3.FOOD SECURITY/NUTRITION: Honey help to sustain a diversified and healthy diet .

4.ECONOMIC/SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: Apiculture will continue to generate income for the actors, improve fotest, swamp and garden pollination.

5.CLIMATE: 

Resilience to climate change, a high absorption of carbon is a side effect of global relevance since our ventute depends on forests and swamps this will create small microclimates and watersheds.


About the author(s)

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                              Name: Brainy Swaibu.

 

 

 

                                                       Dip(EDU) Masindi.

 

Title: CEO. (Cell: +256752348998

 

E mail: brainyswaibu@gmail.com

 

Professional experience.

 

2 years of experience in programmes management in Uganda,

 

4years of experience in Strategic Planning for organisations,

 

10years of experience in teaching, training and instructional facilitation in Secondary School.

 

Work Experience

 

Teacher(full time)                                 Kyangwali SS 2007-2009

 

Teacher (Full Time) Daystar SS 2013-2016

 

 

 

Achievements/Duties

 

Professional Qualifications

 

Certificate in Community Resource person Human -Red Cross Uganda

 

Academic Qualifications

 

 Diploma in Secondary School Education.

 

Academic Researches

 

Assessment of Climate Change Adaptation among Smallholder Farmers in Kyangwali Subcounty Uganda.hi


Related Proposals

 

 

 

 

 

.Beekeeping in Tanzania. It relates to our proposal in project economic costs and treeplanting but differ in that our proposal uses forests and swamps as target areas while that one in Tanzania targets farmlands. 

 

Our proposal targets unemployed and landless youth while for that one in Tanzania targets people with land.

 

Our project will involve collection and training centres  per potential village, while that one in Tanzania doesn't.


References

 

 

 

1.  International Journal of Research on Land-use Sustainability 2: 81-90, 2015

 

Copyright © 2015

 

ISSN: 2200-5978, print

 

Volume 2 | Issue 1| June 2015 P a g e | 81

 

Socio-economic analysis of beekeeping enterprise in 

 

communities adjacent to Kalinzu forest, Western Uganda

 

Fred Kalanzi1,*, Susan Nansereko1

 

, Joel Buyinza1

 

, Peter Kiwuso1

 

, Yonah Turinayo1

 

, Christine 

 

Mwanja1

 

, George Niyibizi1

 

, Samuel Ongerep1NGE.

 

2. National Environment Management 

Authority (NEMA) 

WORLD WETLANDS DAY 

2nd February 2011 Theme: Wetlands for Forests 

PUBLIC TALK AT UGANDA MUSEUM, KAMPALA PUBLIC TALK AT UGANDA MUSEUM, KAMPALA 

Topic: 20 years of Wetlands Conservation in Uganda - Have 

Uganda’s Wetlands become Wastelands Again? 

Presented by: 

Aryamanya-Mugisha, Henry (Ph.D) 

Executive Director 

National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) 

P.O. Box 22255 Kampala 

haryamanya@nemaug.org

www.nemaug.org 

Febraury 2011