Vertical Farming for improved Food Security and Livelihood in Karamoja region.

About Solution

Food scarcity is of late a very common problem world wide. Globally, over 120 million people face food scarcity. In Uganda alone, 13% of the total population are facing food scarcity(source UBOS). This is highly attributed to; 

Lack of enough land to grow crops. Most of the families especially those headed by women don’t own big land for example according to the research carried out by Women Smile Uganda 60% of women headed families live on 50 by 50 land this limits them from carrying out agriculture for both food and livelihood.

Over exhausation of Land. Most of the farmers in rural don’t practice good farming practice like crop rotation for example a farmer can grow one type of crop season in season out without changing the crop for the entire lifetime. This leaves the soils exhausted, infertile and less productive.

Most of the farmers depend heavily on the climate and weather. In the recent past the climatic conditions are hard to be predicted, seasons have changed and farmers are left on the mercy of what comes from the sky. This kind of farming leaves them most of the times with less to add when climate changes unpredictably.

Based on the above revelation,Women smile Uganda uses locally made metallic pipes to make vertical gardens and give them out on credit to women especially those in areas highly affected by climatic changes that’s Karamoja region where there is hardly land to grow crops . This is mainly meant to give chance to those without enough land and infertile soils to grow crops.

As if that is not enough this organization  trains female on how to turn bio-degradable waste into organic composites through vermicomposting that occurs in its vermicomposting core. The compact layered structure creates 36sq ft of soil with only a 9sq ft footprint. It is in essence “a farm in a box” which utilizes composite from bio degradable urban waste, and is capable of growing up to 200 plants.This is aimed at giving them chance to improve their produce as a result of composite fertilizers.

Women Smile goes ahead to train female farmers on how to use drip irrigation on their vertical farms this is aimed on reducing dependant on weather and climate .We link farmers using a web based mobile application to our partner that is  Operation Wealth  Creation for free improved seeds. 
The organization also links female farmers to financial institutions to get loans to run day to day farm activities together with linking them to buyers in different markets using our web based mobile application where they sell the surplus of their food for improved livelihood this is meant to remove the middle men who exploit farmers.

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