Beans' Success Stories
Edward Kizito is a 30-year-old Beans and Coffee farmer from Makota village in Kisimba parish. For the last five years he has been growing beans on a 2-acre piece of land, in addition to tending the family coffee plantation that he inherited from his father.
How I Improved Beans Yield from 5 to 13 bags per Acre and Rehabilitated My Coffee Plantation .
Edward inspecting his second season bean field .
In 2018, Edward received training on crop nutrition and soil fertility management organized by Grainpulse with support from National Agriculture Research Organization (NARO) and Buikwe district Department of Agriculture. After learning that each crop has its own nutritional requirement, he knew he had to change a few things and could no longer use the same fertilizer for all his crops. Initially, he adopted the use of crop-specific fertilizer also known as blended fertilizers from Grainpulse. During the first farming season of 2019, he planted 2 acres of beans and applied the Beans Fertilizer Blend from Grainpulse. He also followed other good crop management practices as advised by our agronomist.
Come harvest time and Kizito was surprised to harvest thirteen 100kgs bags of beans per acre. This was the first harvest of its kind for him and the surrounding areas. This substantial improvement in yield allowed Kizito to reap additional benefits from his 2 acres of beans.
First on the agenda was to rehabilitate the 15-acre coffee plantation that he inherited from his late father which was in a very bad state. Confident that his investment will pay off based on his experience, Kizito purchased Grainpulse coffee fertilizer blend for one acre and plans to progressively expand the usage to cover the entire 15 acres. This will only be possible he says because he expects a bountiful harvest from his second season beans after using Grainpulse crop-specific fertilizer. Indeed, his one-acre coffee plantation is already transformed with noticeably green and lush vegetation and more berries on the coffee bushes.
On the left, Edward showing his rehabilitated coffee bushes with Grainpulse Coffee-fertilizer blend (left) and on the right is his rehabilitated coffee tree without fertilizer.
For farmers like Kizito, being able to access the market to sell his produce at a competitive price is important. Thus, in addition to rehabilitating his coffee plantation, he also used part of his farming income from beans to top up to his savings and acquire a pick-up vehicle for transportation of farm produce.