Kabale is relatively a food secure district by Uganda's standards. However that does not mean that all the people in Kabale town have sufficient food supplies.
Kabale has a large population of more than 500,000. This means land is scarce and the available land is declining in fertility.
This is putting a lot of strain on the livelihoods of the people. A group of urban poor have turned to mushroom growing as the answer to this problem.
Mushroom growing is ideal because it is a backyard farming that does not require a lot of space and is not so labour-intensive and may require just one person.
Junior Kyomuhendo, a resident of Kabale's central division, grows her mushrooms from about 150 bundles of a mixture of coffee husks and mushroom seeds wrapped in black polythene bags and suspended four apiece on strings hung to the ceiling of a five-by-four room.
She describes the process of growing the mushrooms.
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Kyomuhendo buys the coffee husks at two thousand shillings and the mushroom seeds at one thousand shillings, a combination of which forms a bundle.
Each bundle produces between five to ten kilogrammes of mushroom each kilo selling at four thousand shillings.
Kyomuhendo says her primary aim to secure her family food, equating mushrooms to beef in terms of taste and nutrients.
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She also earns a lot of money from the mushrooms, what with an ever-increasing demand yet the production levels keep decreasing.
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Kyomuhendo says with mushrooming growing many women can reduce their dependence on their spouses, adding that when she increases her capacity she would be earning more than what her civil servant husband earns.
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Kyomuhendo says her biggest challenges are increasing production capacity, thefts and the increasing costs of the inputs particularly coffee husks that are sourced from Ntungamo, over 60 kilometers away.
Herbert Tugume, the National Agricultural Advisory Services coordinator for Kabale's central division, says so far they have 30 farmers who are being supported.
He says they want mushroom growing to become the second biggest income earner after poultry rearing for urban dwellers.
