Growing Your Own Food — Sustainable Agriculture for Greater Self-Sufficiency

Our cover photo was taken a few months after the Friends of HOREMI were founded. We chose it again for this post because, despite HOREMI’s incred­ible progress over the past two years, securing a daily supply of food remains a major chal­lenge.

About 80 percent of the popu­la­tion in East Africa depends directly on agri­cul­ture. What is our daily bread is maize porridge in Uganda. And for similar reasons, it is becoming increas­ingly expen­sive, just like pret­zels or break­fast rolls here. With the small differ­ence that we can manage without pret­zels (if neces­sary), but HOREMI cannot manage without maize. While the spon­sor­ship funds ensure that the orphans are provided with food, it is fore­see­able that finan­cial leeway will become tighter in the future…

Kenneth and Naume, the founders of HOREMI, have there­fore asked us to support them in their long-term plan to expand their self-suffi­ciency and improve their farming oper­a­tions, which until now have been more of a side project. They are keen to become less reliant on dona­tions through their own initia­tives and efforts. Given the continued growth of HOREMI and its school, greater inde­pen­dence from volatile local markets is essen­tial.

HOREMI aims to do without the expen­sive synthetic fertil­izers that are ubiq­ui­tous in Uganda as well, and instead focus on the sustain­able culti­va­tion of corn, peanuts, and other local crops. This will be achieved through addi­tional farm­land, seeds adapted to local soil condi­tions, sensible irri­ga­tion, and other sustain­able methods in crop produc­tion and soil-conserving land use. Further­more, a signif­i­cant increase in crop yields would allow for the sale of more agri­cul­tural prod­ucts, thereby gener­ating addi­tional income. This repre­sents another impor­tant step toward greater self-suffi­ciency.

As an orga­ni­za­tion, we are currently researching local agri­cul­tural training programs to provide the HOREMI team with the best possible support in terms of content, to lay a solid foun­da­tion for the “Eigenes Essen” project, and to prepare them for the impacts of climate change. However, the initial costs for training, land leases, seeds, irri­ga­tion equip­ment, etc., cannot be covered by our current budget. Thank you for helping us help ourselves!fe!

Would you like to give the chil­dren of HOREMI a helping hand? You can donate quickly and easily here. Thank you very much!

You can find all the ways to support HOREMI on our dona­tions page.