Now living and working with in Uganda, Lucy Reid is a recent UCD ag science graduate, hailing from Co Offaly.

The Shinrone native grew up on a beef and tillage farm and is currently three months into her role as project and operations manager at Devenish Uganda, a pioneering agricultural development business.

Lucy is working in Hoima as part of a team of 27 that looks after a pig performance unit, an animal feed mill and shops that are spread across the country.

The project Lucy works on aims to assist farmers in the transition from subsistence to sustainable commercial level farming through agricultural extension and knowledge sharing.

"It’s been an incredible experience with so much to take in over the past few months.

"It has been great getting to know the team and the business, but it has also been challenging with the current political unrest in Uganda and of course, the ongoing COVID-19 situation," she said.

Nutrition

Since 2013, Devenish has invested into the business in Uganda, which it is building on with the continued support of the Africa Agri-Food Development Programme (AADP).

Lucy said: "The whole idea is to bring quality feeds made from local materials to the market here.

"Apart from the pre-mix, which we import from our mill in Belfast, all of the raw materials used in our animal feed in Uganda are sourced from local suppliers, which is helping to create a market for their product and improve livelihoods."

Ugandan market

Lucy said that high demand can cause price fluctuations for feed - at the moment, the price for soya and maize keeps rising, which is not sustainable for the economy.

"It has a real impact on local community and farmers trying to source feeds for their animals.

"People have begun to look into alternative sources of protein for their animals, such as sunflower, to help meet the gap that has come with the raw material fluctuations," she said.

Pig genetics

“Our whole ambition is to improve the pig sector here, by bringing quality pig genetics into the country, ultimately to bring subsistence farmers out of subsistence farming and into commercial farming," she said.

Lucy is on the ground a lot, visiting different farmers every week with another extension officer.

”We provide technical support, from nutrition to pig management.

“We have been training farmers on good agricultural practices, climate smart agriculture and animal nutrition.

“We have also been involved in the roll out of AI to reduce risks of African swine fever," she added.

Food

“I wasn’t expecting to see so much variety of food out here - anything can grow in Uganda. But there is a crisis now with soil health and yields dropping. It’s also very difficult to get food to market,” Lucy said.

Farming enterprises

Farmers in Uganda are often involved in a lot of small enterprises.

Lucy said that farmers usually have a grow bit of everything and that there is not a huge amount of specialisation in any one sector alone.

“Farmers out here could be mango farming or have fruit and vegetables or a few chickens," she said.