FYI, titotal:

Iqram and Lessin are also giving regular interviews, and are making weekly twitter spaces about their new social media app JellyJelly:

 https://x.com/iqramband/status/1900274440199692779

Not to justify anything, but just to let you know this. Also, they are not merely "backers". They are the project's founders.

David,

If there is anything you can do to help, it will be much appreciated.

Crypto is something I first engaged with (for the very first time) only months ago -- after I had already posted on this forum seeking support (in vain).

I am not a crypto person, just trying to cling on it as a last resort after everything else had failed.

Michael, I can see, I misinterpreted your message. Still, by writing to me with those words, you are one of the people who gave me real hope (it is why I interpreted your message in an even bigger way).

Anthony 

Titotal, thanks so much for this. I surely know you are one of the people who had my back in previous posts. Although I won't dispute anyone's views on crypto, I just wanted to point out that the crypto project in paricular that I mentioned (JellyJelly), and its founders, are indeed known in the west, even by mainstream media outlets.

Somewhere you said, "I have not heard of either of the people you claim are backing the project.".

Sam Lessin is described in this Vox article, this Vice article, and in CNET, as being a former Facebook VP who was also a classmate of Zuckerberg (and that his father is the one who introduced Mark Zuckerberg to some Venture Capitalists in the early days of Facebook).

Sam Lessin, and his wife Jessica Lessin, are also the founders of the tech media outlet "The Information", which (according to Google) is also called Lessin Media.

On the other hand, Iqram Magdon-Ismail is known by all US media outlets as being the co-founder of VENMO. This is mentioned by CNBC, also in Inc, and Entrepreneur Mag

Today, both Sam Lessin and Iqram's twitter pages are only tweeting about one thing: JellyJelly, and their intended new social media app JellyJelly.com (please check their twitter pages). 

So, although crypto is indeed like a casino, at least I would think putting $10,000 in a token whose founders have such a background, at a time when this token is at the very lowest price it has ever been at, isn't a big risk -- especially if I can't find someone to directly give me the full GBP 339,000 or the $814,000 that is needed for our intended grain facility.

Although I am new to crypto, I can guarantee that putting $10,000 in JellyJelly now, at the very least, will result in $20,000 (in only weeks from today), which would still at least help our sorghum project alone, if it can't do so with the grain facility.

Hi Nick, 

I am very grateful to hear from you too, and thanks so much for this really encouraging message. True, I understand this post might surely attract some downvotes, or even some pushback especially on that part of crypto, but I have also gradually gotten used to this, so I will certainly take it easy. 

I have only decided to turn to crypto as a way of raising money for our intended facility only as a last resort -- because everything else didn't work (and I wouldn't like to give up). I also think the crypto token in particular that I had in mind at least has a solid background (given its founders and its intended use). 

Okay Mathias.

Hi Roddy, I have edited my two recent replies for clarity. 

To add to my previous message, Roddy (edited):

The reason Uganda Breweries is the only big buyer right now who is very willing to buy our farmers sorghum even without a plant, isn't because Uganda Breweries cleans this sorghum themselves. It is because they work with a third party processor called GrainPulse who cleans this sorghum on behalf of UBL. Even the sorghum from our own project that we sell to UBL, GrainPulse is where we take it, from where it is then taken to UBL. 

I can't think of other institutional buyers of sorghum who are willing to accept us as a supplier under the same setup that we are working with UBL. This all leaves us with only one buyer. 

The other thing is pricing. If GrainPulse was owned by our project, or if we had a grain cleaning facility like the one that Ruth (in Soroti) has, the price that Uganda Breweries pays for our farmers' sorghum per kg would be higher than the Ugx1,300 - 1,500 that they are paying us now. Because that sorghum would be on a standard where it is ready for brewing.

The other thing is transport. If we have a grain cleaning facility of our own, with ample storage (e.g. a 1000 ton  silo), some big buyers (like the WFP) who have their own transport may be able to come for our produce at our plant in Kamuli, saving us transport.

(I have edited this reply for clarity and to add a little context):

First, let's assume sugarcane brings farmers more income than sorghum. Even then, diversifying with crops like sorghum is still very essential, because our region Busoga, presently, is known for only one thing (sugarcane), and is currently the biggest sugarcane producing region in Uganda.

Sugarcane has been blamed for severe hunger and malnutrition in our region. Sorghum on the other hand, can be eaten as food (unlike sugarcane), and being a drought-resistant crop, it is one of those crops that could contribute greatly to food security in a region like ours where droughts have become very frequent.

Moreover, a 2021 news report by Uganda's The Independent said “for Busoga to get out of the current poverty cycle, there will be need to diversify and find new crops for farmers other than the whole region cultivating one perennial crop.” And since the main challenge rural farmers in our region face is the absence of reliable markets, a grain facility like the one we intend to install is the very kind of thing that would help these farmers diversify their crops/incomes.

Now the answers to the questions you asked, Roddy:

1). With a yield of around 40 tons/acre, even using the lowest price Ugx 60,000/ton would give an annual revenue of Ugx 2.4m/acre. For your estimates for sorghum of Ugx 1,300/kg and 700kg/acre with 2 harvests/year, that would only be Ugx 1.82m/acre. Is there some thing I'm missing?

Sugarcane takes two years to mature, and is harvested once in a 24-month cycle. During the same period, a sorghum farmer harvests four times. This way, sorghum may be a better choice.

The other thing with sugarcane is that it is almost exclusively bought by only one category of buyers (sugarcane millers). As a result, whenever it drops to the levels of Ugx 60,000 per ton, it isn't just that farmers suffer a low price. It is that they also often have no buyers (due to oversupply), which is why they then resort to selling it as firewood, or for as little as Ugx 30,000 ($8) for a full Tata truck that has ~10 tons (as said in this facebook post). 

By contrast, sorghum has a relatively wider market (all breweries; relief agencies, animal feed producers etc). The UN's World Food Program alone, which is currently the biggest buyer of grains in Africa, sources sorghum and other crops from 15+ countries, including Uganda (see page 3 of this PDF) -- and buying from smallholder farmers is one of their priorities.

2). About the benefits of the facility versus the current setup of growing sorghum without a plant: do you have an estimate for how much sorghum Uganda Breweries and other companies would be willing to buy in the current setup? That is, how many farmers/acres could you support without the plant?

Uganda Breweries (UBL) has no limit on the number of farmers that they are willing to buy from (or the volume of sorghum they are willing to buy from them) without a plant. However, of all the institutional buyers of grains in Uganda today, UBL is probably the only buyer who is willing to buy our farmers' sorghum under this setup.

Putting UBL aside, the other big buyers of grains in Uganda (and in Africa) are relief agencies like the WFP, GOAL, UNHCR, USAID, World Vision etc who provide emergency food assistance in refugee camps, hospitals, schools etc. However, because of things like aflatoxins (which are said to be present in 75% of Uganda's grains), all of these agencies have strict guidelines for buying grains like maize and sorghum, and do not buy from food suppliers who do not have their own established postharvest handling and cleaning facilities. 

But it isn't just relief agencies. A few weeks ago, we contacted Nile Breweries to ask if they too could start buying our farmers sorghum, since Nile is located in our region of Busoga (in Jinja), yet UBL (our current buyer) is in Kampala. We haven't received a final answer yet. However, when you do some research, the fact is: Nile, unlike UBL, requires their grain suppliers to have their own grain cleaning/storage facilities before they can supply them. 

A farmer named Ruth from Soroti (in a distant part of eastern Uganda outside of Busoga) who currently owns a grain cleaning and storage facility that was also installed by Alvan Blanch, says in this news article that... "I told [Nile] if I could be one of their suppliers of white sorghum. They welcomed the idea [but] they told me I had to have a warehouse as well as a machine capable of cleaning the sorghum".

This means: the only big buyer we can work with under our current setup is UBL and no one else. The other thing? Under this setup, expanding our sorghum project to reach a big number of farmers would be very hard, because even our capacity for handling their produce will be limited. 

Above all, handling large volumes of sorghum without any postharvest systems is prone to aflatoxin contamination (a common reason for which Uganda's grain produce is often rejected.

3). A separate question: could you give me an idea of what proportion of farmers in Busoga grow sugarcane versus being subsistence farmers?

First, the number of farmers here in Busoga who only own <3 acres of land are the majority, as The Monitor says here (subscription required). As such, smallholder farmers, who mostly engage in subsistence agriculture, also form the biggest number of sugarcane growers. 

It is why Uganda's president recently urged small farmers in Busoga to leave sugarcane, because they (small farmers) are the majority, and when people talk of sugarcane (and the misery it has unraveled) in Busoga, they are often referring to these rural smallholder farmers -- although there is also a small number of farmers who own large pieces of land, and who are the ones who have at least managed to benefit from sugarcane growing.

Thanks so much for sharing this. I will keep an eye at CE, and their upcoming application cycle.