How big harvests and milk will bring peace to conflicts in Africa

Original Story Published by: Charles Onyango-Obbo, The East African, www.theeastafrican.co.ke
Photo Source: Charles Onyango-Obbo, The East African

(Above) Dairy cows. At Gulu, a one-time war zone now flows with milk

At the edge of Gulu city in northern Uganda lies Gulu Country Dairy, founded by a youthful maverick veterinary doctor, Tonny Kidega.

Kidega is a unicorn of sorts; he is possibly the only Ugandan farmer who has consistently sold a litre of raw milk between Ush2,000 ($0.54) and Ush3,000 ($0.81). In other parts of the country, dairy farmers are making do with an average of Ush700 ($0.19).

“We are obsessive about the quality of our milk. It has a signature, and our customers expect it and pay for it”, Kidega said.

The feeding and milking of the cattle are meticulous. The cows are machine-milked, and no human hands touch the milk. There is hardly any smell in the cattle pens, although the cows stomp on a messy dung and urine blend on the floor of the pen.

“That mess is gold,” Kidega said. “We scoop it up three times a day, and sort it between what goes into the biogas tanks and the manure spreader.”

From the biogas tanks, trenches slope down into an extensive maize garden. The maize is densely green and strikingly tall. It, and the grass that grows everywhere around the farm, are shredded daily into feed for the cows.