Growing Mushrooms in Uganda and Empowering Community Growers

https://www.instagram.com/hannahatthegardens/

Transcript

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welcome back to the Global Stewardship Podcast, where the mission is to highlight farmers and food producers around the globe who are doing impactful things for the land and their communities. This week's farmer that is being interviewed is Mr. A Ha Canary. He's one of a growing team of mushroom producers in Uganda, and their mission is to expand this business model across Africa. Before kicking it off though, I wanted to give some 2026 life updates. Right now I am planning a homeschool co-op for my kid for a bunch of other kids in our community to start homeschooling twice a week on our farm, just doing nature school. We also are getting our first dairy cow in just a couple of days, which is daunting. But like I have said on social media, if you follow me there, just like with anything in our farming journey, it is always a huge lifestyle change to add something else to the mix, whether it was. Gardening and having to harvest on time or chickens and having to collect the eggs every day or sheep and having to rotate their fencing. I think adding milking to the schedule is just gonna be the next thing. And honestly, humans have been milking dairy animals waking up with the sun to do so for thousands of years and have been relying on the sunshine and grass and table scraps to do it. So I think if they can do it, I can do it. And like I mentioned last week, I also just launched our trip to Northern England in May and June. So if you missed that head over to my social media, there's only two, maybe, maybe not even two, but definitely one or two spots left. So if you're a woman who wants to join and go on a farm foodie trip, I'm thrilled about it, I've also been busy booking up podcast guests for the first quarter, I truly appreciate your patience during the first six months of this show. It really has been difficult to find eager farming, food producing guests week after week because we are some busy people. Not to mention that so many have not spoken English so your patience is so beyond appreciated. I'm about to press play on my interview that I had with Mr. Canary from Agro mush Uganda. It made me excited that we are planting 90 trees worth of mushrooms on our farm this year. This is not the first, nor will it be remotely the last episode interviewing somebody from a country in Africa. I think if you've listened to some of the previous episodes, you can tell that there's a common theme of community resilience, people who are compassionate for one another. And folks whose overall mission is not to make money for themselves with growing food, but to truly nourish their communities. And like with the rest of those shows, the audio quality isn't always the best and we cut in and out. What you're hearing is a short clip of our interview or several short clips that are kind of blended together, and I had to do that because several of them were just totally incoherent, unusable. You would not have been able to make it through the episode at all. Ultimately, I think that this is a call for us to continue to rethink the way that we see Africa and that we see. Uh, food sovereignty there so many American farmers, people who are listening have been taught that we are the saviors of the farming food system. And what I tend to learn every episode that goes by interviewing people who are actually farmers there, is that we are the most helpful when we are empowering them to grow their own food. Ah.

Audio Only - All Participants 3:26

Agro Uganda Limited was found. In September, year 2019 by a group of five energetic, motivated, young men and, three women. Our vision, is to be the leading, mushrooms and suppliers of quality mushrooms in Uganda uh, our vision always gives us a sense of direction and captures our aspiration of being, being the best in everything that we do. Our vision. Uh, our vision and our values, uh, also guide us. They guide the choice and decision we make every day. We also have the mission to train, equip, and empower communities especially mothers and youth. and ensure food security we were overwhelmed by the market. We farmed mushrooms and the demand was higher than supply. So we had to introduce, uh, community groups or community farmers by empowering them with, machine growing skills and knowledge on how to grow machines. Then they grow for us. We buy from them. The surplus. They also have, for the family or for the home use or for the home food. So that's how we introduced the groups in order to increase the machine production. We have also come up with additions as far as mushroom is concerned, whereby we make mushroom wine, we make mushroom soup, we make mushroom, baby por and many others. Sometimes we get videos of the Empower community mothers speaking about how the project has uplifted there. They're living, then the, that video is taken by different communities to be heard by different community, uh, mothers and youth. So people have bought the idea. We are using first and foremost Ugandan land, the land is limited, is not enough, but at least the machine farming favors the smaller land. Whereby in the space of, two feet by five feet, you can do grow mushrooms and you can grow for sale and for home consumption. So that's how we have been doing our work and. It has really, uplifted communities and once you help to uplift the communities, no matter being paid cash, it can earn you a blessing because it means you have changed someone's life. I read that you are empowering people and partnering with people in the slums in Kampala. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah, to listeners, could you set the scene and kind of explain what it looks like, what life is like for people and why this is important. Machine farming, it's a business that, doesn't require a big chunk of land for, for you to practice. And, uh, it's a, it's a type of, uh, of farming that you can do in the short time because mushrooms. A little bit of days for them to grow, uh, machine mistake, just, take 14 days for them to be mature. And, uh, you start harvesting. So people around Kampala, slums, those, as we talk of slums, we talk about the ghetto people. Slums is like, undeveloped, structures where these people who are needy are always staying for the living. So. They, they, in most cases, they stay in slums, not for good, but due to lack of enough basic needs at home. So they don't stay there for good, but. They lack what? What is needed them. So what we do introduce these, small things that they can do for short time and they benefit them as they uplift their livelihoods, uh, because they're always in, not in good condition. Some find they don't have food, some don't have money to buy medicine, some don't have money to. To take students to take their children to school. So when they practice machine farming, uh, which doesn't require a chunk of land in the small place of where they're, it is always, very important and it gives them at least an uplift. To change from one, one state to another, which is also very important and which has at least done some good work for now. Are there any success stories of people who have mushroom farmed with you that stand out? Yeah. Um, I think another story that I can give to you is a story of the, of the national park in district, whereby we have introduced national farming, uh, to the people around the national parks, and it has for sure. Became successful. And along this it has reduced poaching and hunting of, um, national park animals because people around the national parks would go to the national parks to hunt animals for food. But as I can say now, people around the national parks, they can grow mushrooms and they earn money at as well, they get food for, for their home consumption. Wow, an amazing story. Very, very interesting. Yeah. Wow. So as you sell more and more mushrooms and mushroom products, like Yes. Are you filling a big need in the market? Do a lot of people know how to cook these mushrooms? Can you kind of talk about that a little bit? Yeah. When, community groups, once they grow mushrooms, they, they supply to us. We buy their mushrooms. And keeping encouraging our community groups to keep growing more mushrooms. We don't charge them money because they don't have at all. Some people are there, but they're very needy. So when you develop a heart of supporting also God braces your heart and maybe you, get more clients to, to buy mushrooms so once God blesses you, you reach the market, you take your machines, so it's, it's a very good to have a, a heart, especially when it comes to the needy, which can also be a, a great, a great blessings to, to, to you with supporting them. As they get more money, they also get happy because they're able to, to access their best needs. Especially people in the slums. Uh, those people around the national parks, when they get money, they even forget about poaching or they get about hunting the wild animals. Which is also, uh, very nice to us. So for. Because mushrooms are, they're, they're healthy foods that a person should have to take a, um, at home and we have also tried our best to use radios to introduce, to tell people how good mushrooms are, how they can eat them, how they can cook, how good the body can benefit from feeding machines. How many mushrooms do you think all of your community groups are growing and supplying? How many people do you think are eating these mushrooms? Uh, we supply the grocery supermarket, so I can estimate like over three people are on our mushrooms. I would love to talk more about all of the things you make with mushrooms. Yeah. Yeah. We already make, mushroom wine, which is also healthy. And uh, it's a good beverage and people are fighting for it because we supply to the, supermarket, we supply to the big shops. We sell these beverages, we supply to the parties, and people are buying seriously. We have good wine, mushroom wine, wow, that's really interesting. I've never tried mushroom wine. What, what does it taste like? What's it like? Uh, it tastes, it tastes good you know, it depends on what customers, like. Some customers like sweet, others like what is not sweet. So when we are fermenting it, we always, uh, add some honey. So that it can be, uh, bit sweeter. So it's, it's very good so I, I'm a vegetable farmer. And I save seeds for our vegetables, um, so we can be sustainable and replant every year. And I'm just now starting to grow mushrooms. Like you have, you have also started growing mushrooms? Yes. But. Very, very small scale. So I was hoping to pick your brain and ask how are you able to best preserve your mushroom spawn at all of these different locations? For the, for the machine spa? Mm-hmm. We have a laboratory at our firm. Where, where the spawn is produced from, and, uh, out growers come and pick the, from our farm. They don't themselves. They prepare what is supposed to be for growing machines. They come to the farm, they pick up. What got you personally into wanting to be a mushroom grower or farmer? For me, when I reached to the and I farming, I really loved it. So that's why I went back to my country, Uganda, and I introduced it to the other, uh, fellow, members who I work with. Mushroom farming or mushroom growing is very nice because it, it earns good money and it doesn't require, much money to start. That's awesome. What are your. Upcoming goals, what's your vision for the future Right now? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, we hope to empower more and more communities around Uganda, especially. Of course, we, we especially, we love to empower to have machines for their home conception first. Then because they're healthy wise, they, they, they add a lot of nutritional values to our bodies. I can tell you we have some parts of Uganda, like, uh, some parts like Karamoja where people lack some nutritional values, but when they feed on such a, uh, machine, which has good and many nutritional values, it can improve their nutritional values so we call for partnership because for us, we always have the budget. We have the plan. We say this year we shall empower 100 community groups. It's inspiring to hear your story as humans, we have such a responsibility to care for each other. And like you were saying, God blesses those, that plus others. And something that listeners. Can actually learn a lot from just the simple story of partnering with other people. So many farmers are very individual and, they don't bring other people along on the mission. So I think that's really important and I thank you for contributing to that conversation