Over one million farmers of dairy cattle in Uganda practice zero grazing. More than 25% of them are in Urban or peri-urban areas where they have limited access to own feed or forage, this creates market for feed and fodder.
From the Uganda bureau of statistics 2024, Uganda has over 15.5 million cattle. A dairy cow can consume 3% of its body weight, on average one dairy cow weighs 400kg, meaning it consumes up to 12kg of feed and fodder per day there by creating a demand of 186,000 tonnes of feed and fodder per day equating to 6.7 billion tonnes of dry matter annually.
According to research by National Livestock Resources Research Institute (NaLIRRI), Uganda has a hey deficit of over 20 million tonnes per year. This is caused by a number of factors among which are climate change, land fragmentation which forces a number of families to practice zero grazing among others.
With such demand, growing pasture can be turned into a lucrative business especially for the youth further more Forge production has been found to have high profit margins because of lower production costs compared to other crops.
With proper training on pasture growing, harvesting and turning to hay, a number of youth in rural areas can leverage this training into a business opportunity hence economic growth in the rural areas.
A bale of hay in Uganda weighs about 25kg and a Kilogram on the Ugandan market is about 300 Uganda Shillings, this puts the cost of a single bale at 7500 Uganda Shillings. Considering the current country demand of 6.7 billion tonnes of hay, this computes to 268 million bales of hay with each at an average price of 7500 Uganda shillings, hay business has up to 2 Trillion Uganda shillings up for grabs annually.
