BY IRENE LAMUNU
Jackie Okao is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Lima Farm, which grows cassava on a large scale for commercial purposes. Lima Farm produces high-quality cassava flour from the cassava tubers harvested for human consumption and industrial use; the flour is exported and consumed locally.
According to Jackie, it’s better to add value to the cassava than sell the tubers because it’s more profitable, though she warns that it is a tough and challenging job. “Value addition is more profitable and rewarding but requires a lot of investment capital and time. Getting machines is the most expensive,” noted Jackie.
The CEO added that when cassava is harvested and processed to make flour, the residue is turned into animal feeds. Besides cassava, the farm has introduced piggery and poultry farming so that the animals and birds can benefit from the bi-products of the cassava. She revealed that cassava has many uses; it’s used to make bio-ethanol and other industrial uses like making glue and cassava starch, among other things.
The cassava farm is seated on 360 acres of land, with 250 out- growers growing cassava. 80% are refugees from Palabek Refugee Farm and 20 % from the host community in Palabek. Jackie added that beginning the farm was a dream come true. As a child, she loved farming and as a grown-up, she knew that farmers were always the wealthiest people and she wanted to be rich. Unfortunately in Uganda, farmers are the poorest!
However, this did not discourage Jackie from chasing her dream. She and her husband were working outside the country and on one of her trips to Cape Town, she got fully inspired to start farming. When she returned, she talked o her husband about it and they decided to look for land and ended up in Gulu district. For her dream to become a reality, Jackie and her husband started by buying 250 acres of land in Palaro village. The land remained idle but they thought they needed to do something on it so that even if they were away for the longest time, they would still benefit from it; they thought of what they could use the land for.
In 2016, they opened up a farmland and Lima farm was birthed. In 2018, they planted their first cassava crop on the farm and got their first production. At the moment, most of the products are being exported to Kenya.
Jackie attributes her success in the business to her love for cassava. She revealed that she can eat cassava every day and still enjoy it. Moreover, she knew that it was not demanding to maintain it once planted. This gave her a leeway to grow cassava on a large scale. They would be out of the country for years and when they returned, the cassava would be in good shape.
When they returned, they thought about the market for the cassava and how they would sell it. Fortunately for them, with the multiple ethanol factories set up, they knew they had a ready market. She therefore decided to process it into flour so that it was not easily perishable and easy to transport. They acquired the machinery to begin processing, constructed a washing space to clean up the cassava, then bought a cassava peeler, an industrial grater to grate the cassava, a drier and a miller to get high-quality products to meet the international standard because they were looking for a bigger market outside Uganda.
Once the cassava is washed, peeled and grated, they place it in a drier and within 24 hours, it’s dried and milled into flour then packaged. With this, they are sure that the quality is not compromised. Like every business, Lima Farm faces many challenges but the CEO is very optimistic that it’s just a phase and it will pass. Jackie said they had found an international market but failed to supply because of the demand. The client wanted 100 tons of flour per day and they only
produce 7 tonnes in a day.
Another big challenge is that the market in Uganda considers their product very expensive. She added that they are sending all the flour to the Kenyan market and will return to the Ugandan market later. The Products from Lima Farm are packed in one kilogram, 5 kilograms and 50 kilograms. A kilogram of packed high-quality Cassava flour from Lima Farm goes for Ugx 3000.
