 If you have the chance to change one thing in Africa, what will it be? I'd say people need to really stop having excuses. People are always, as human beings, by nature we like to complain, but sometimes you have to look at where we could be and not look at where others are. We want to behave a certain way as people. The mindset of Africans is very, very much unhelpful for lack of a better word. Because in Africa, you'll find most of the Africans want to behave like white people. But you have to look at the situation where you are. The white people, what is working for them? Maybe tech is working for them and all that. But here we have to look at what is going to help us to survive. Agriculture is good. Agriculture helps you afford the lifestyle you want. If these people could change their mindsets, you don't want to live like Europeans when you have no job, when you're not doing anything. So we need to change our mindset from giving so many excuses, so many excuses not to take that first step. So I wish people could just be bold and know that you can start from anything small. My name is Joel Belletti. I'm a farmer and I'm the CEO of Eco Valley Farm. I have had a very fruitful life, at least for my age. I am a former alcoholic. I used to overindulge, shall we say, in alcoholism. Totally changed. What changed you? At some point, you have to realise that you don't have to change for someone else. At some point, I think this was after my last stint in rehabilitation centre. One of the guys that inspired me, particularly poultry farming, is Dr. Daniel. He's a medical doctor but he quit his profession and joined farming and he has a very successful chicken enterprise. So that's one of the guys that has really inspired me to do my farming bit. Daniel, the chicken farmer. The chicken farmer, the poultry man or the chicken man. The passionate chicken farmer. Do you know that you are inspiring so many people, even Uganda? I'm glad that I can inspire lots of people. But I think he has one request. What is that request? That Daniel switches to local. Daniel will never switch to local. I'll think about it. Why are you not doing local breed Daniel? The reason I'm not doing local breed is because on a very large scale, it's quite complicated. It's a bit easier on a smaller scale. But on a large scale, you know, 40, 50 thousand birds, it's really complicated because the requirements and the input is so different. That's why? Yes, that's why. It's not about the money Daniel. True, it's not about the money. Mr. Joel Baleti? Baleti. Baleti, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. And I was told that you spent seven years in university. Is that true? Yes, it's true. How can you spend seven years in a university? Like all people, when you're growing up, you make so many mistakes. So I happened to, at some point, roll with the wrong crowd and I had issues with drugs and drink, especially drinks, alcohol. But then by the grace of God, I managed to overcome all that. You used to booze a lot? Yeah, I think I made a name for myself. Ha! The boozing man, what was the name? Ha! No, everyone knew me for that. That was what they associated me with alcohol. Does it mean that you were not going to school or you were failing exams or something like that? No, I was not failing. On the contrary, I was passing, but then it's not sustainable at some point. You know, we have some addicts that are functioning. You can go to class as a guest drunk and then there are those that cannot function. So I was not functioning. So I basically couldn't balance booze and school. You grew up in Uganda? Yes, I did. Where in Uganda? Yeah, I grew up in Kampala. And how was life growing up? Life was good, man. I had everything. I love that! Life was good. How good was life? No, life was good. I've never lacked. I was raised by a single mom, but then she provided everything that we needed from the term of our kids. A big round of applause to your mom. What do you mean by your mom did everything? She educated me. First of all, that's the biggest gift you can give to your child. You can educate them and then guide them. See if the opportunities may be here and there. You can look out for your children and make sure they're successful. You have to set a platform for your child to be successful. Doesn't mean it became stubborn when you went to university. No, it was stubborn even in primary. How stubborn were you? I'll give you an example. I went to about ten secondary schools. Ten different secondary schools? Why? I was being expelled. There's one I worked out of, but then others I was being expelled. So now you're changed, man? Totally changed. What changed you? At some point you have to realize that you don't have to change for someone else. You changed for yourself. At some point, I think this was after my last stint in rehabilitation center. I was like, I'm done with this. You even went to a rehabilitation center? Quite a number of times. Why did they take you there? I had to solve the drink issue. For them, their best way of solving it, which turned out to be the best, was you go out there, get some help. At first, when you're this side, you don't know how to cope with these things. You're waking up and you're sweating, you're sleeping. I mean, you can't sleep, and you're thinking maybe I'm the one who's going through this. Mentally, you're trying to, you know, it's playing games with your head. But when you go to rehab and then you realize how other guys are also going through it, or even worse, you then start to build up. What were you studying in university? I did development studies. And now, you are a farmer? I am a farmer. Why? I mean, why farming? I believe farming, first of all, in this country, farming is not something that is overly burdened by the outside pressures of other businesses, like heavy taxes. We pay our taxes, most of them are paid indirectly. Although this, I think it's this financial year where they want to start taxing people, they want to start taxing farms. Yes, but then, for the past, it has been one of the areas where you will not pay directly to the government, so there's less stress there. And then it's also something that has quick returns in terms of investment. So, for example, I'll give you, if a young guy has maybe like 100 broilers, they know that in like four weeks, five weeks, they're going to get some money if they look after them very well. So it's one of the easiest ways to get money if you know what you're doing. What does farming mean to you right now? It's everything. First of all, I enjoy it as a person, I enjoy it. And the job, my other work that I do cannot really help me with in terms of being sustainable, in terms of supporting myself and the other people that I support. So you, farming right now, it means everything. I enjoy doing it and I also, I find pleasure in it. It's a way to relax when you, maybe you've had a long day, you can look at your animals and maybe you get money from a sale and then you forget everything. What kind of farming are you practicing in here? I'm doing mixed farming. We have mangoes, we have matoke plantain, we have pigs, kato, a few goats for our own consumption. We have local chicken and we also have broilers. Is this business profitable? It is profitable. It is profitable if you know what you're doing. How profitable? Well, I'll tell you, for example, I'll give you a simple example of broilers. They may not be, the profit margin is not that big, but it's almost recurrent. So if you have your batches, if you're doing your broilers in batches, you're almost assured of a constant profit. That's one example I'll tell you. Another example I can give you is that if you have, for example, kato and you not look after one good kato and it's giving you about maybe 30 liters, 20 liters, and you're counting about 20,000 every day. So if you remove the milk of the calf and you remove the worker as well, the money that you pay, you're getting about maybe 15,000 every day. So at the end of the month, for one kato you have some good money. So you can see that in terms of profit, if I want to make money in a short time, if I have maybe 90 million and I know what I'm doing, instead of me planting trees and waiting for 100 years, that's another debate. But instead of someone planting trees and they wait for 10 years, if I have 90 million and I know what I'm doing, I can get that money very fast. Will you encourage the Jews of Africa to enter into farming? Yeah, yeah. I'll encourage them to join farming. But they must also know that farming is a bit lonely. If you don't really know what you're doing, you will get frustrated. And those frustrations, no one's going to share them with you. You're going to suffer them alone. How lonely? First of all, it's you, the guy that has taken part in this enterprise, that has to get the burden of everything. Your worker doesn't care if you've made losses. You have to pay them. Your friends don't care if you have 1,000 birds of life. They want you at the party. You understand? So it's a commitment. So I encourage them. I would like to tell them it's much, much better for them to take part in the farming. But do as much research as possible. Know what you want. And you must love it. If you go in there because everyone's telling you that there's money, you're not going to make it. It should be something that you do for pleasure or passion. You must love it. Because if I don't have a love for chicken, I will not know what my chicken looks like if it has new castle. I'll be like, okay, this chicken is not okay. Put it there. Let's get something for it. All these people are going to give me their traditional advice. You know what? Get ash. Do this to ash. Put it there. It will be okay. But if I love it, I'm going to see this one case. I'm going to isolate it. And then I'm going to maybe give the rest preventive doses. Yes? I really want you to take me around. But I want to know if you still drink, man. No, no, no. I've been sober for eight years now. I'm going to my eighth year. Whoa. See, I have a friend who drinks like tomorrow is not there. If you have a message to them, what would that message be? They have to change. This is their own individual battle. They don't have to change because they're changing for their wife, their children, their what. First, you as a person, you have to change. If I can tell you something, it's that I have been very, very down and I have met people that have been very down. But if you are positive about your approach and you want to recover, one of the tips I can give you, drink a lot of water when you've just stopped. Drink a lot of water. Every day that passes, get a calendar. Take that day. Take that day. Motivate yourself. If you want, you can go for a run, go to the gym. Those who are interested. But you have to motivate yourself. The others can only do so much. They will take you to rehab. They will do this and that for you. But then they will stop it there. They cannot do much more for you. It's you that is going to sneak out of this gate at night. Go to the shop nearby and come back with your liquor. And in the morning you can act like it's all good. You're hiding it from them but you know what you're going through. There are so many problems that come without go. So many problems. So you need to stop. So many problems. There are the kind of problems that you are into. I've been detained, arrested. I've been fought. I have hearing problems in one ear. I think you can see the scar. There are so many issues that you go through with this. There are so many problems. Even drooping out of school. These are immediate problems. I can live now. I have one ear, yes. I can say I have one ear. But then I live. But then there are people that have lost their lives in that chaos. There are people that are in prison for knocking somebody. I would encourage you to go to a rehab center in Uganda. I don't know if you've been to one. And let people... And the problems are universal. The problems that are in Uganda without alcohol and drugs are the same problems that are in the U.S. The same problems that are everywhere. What counts in here? Yes. This is for dairy or? This is dairy. Most of them are cross-bred cattle. We only have one pure breed. That is the big girl there. The pigeon. The rest are crosses. We have 75%, 50%. We have a cross there. That's a jersey cross. The rest are crosses. But the pure one is that pigeon over there. So you take the milk every morning? Yes. We milk every morning and every evening. Although I was advised that I should now start milking three times a day. But then at the moment, we're milking morning and evening. The more you feed them with this, the more milk they produce? There's a difference here. It doesn't necessarily have to be how much food it eats, but the type of feed that it eats. If you give it fresh grass, it's more about how much you give it and then it will have a running stomach. If you want it to eat much less, if it's fresh grass, it can eat as much as 80 kilos even. But if it's this, this is glorious. We grow it and then we make it into hay. If you give it this, you'll find that it will eat much less. It will eat about 20, 25 kilos and then it will drink a lot more water because this is dry matter now. Dry matter is what is going to help you produce that milk and to chew the card like you're seeing that jazzy. And if you see it resting and chewing card, then it's producing milk. So you do eat less of this. Why will a young guy like you decide to go into farming? Farming is fun. Like I told you earlier on, the returns are quick. So if you want, especially if you know what you're doing, if you make enough research, you'll learn that there are very few businesses where the returns will be as quick as farming. As young people from Africa, we don't find farming to be that sexy. We don't find farming to be that job that, oh, I'm a farmer. We want to say I'm a doctor, I'm an engineer and all of that. I mean, people don't tell you that sometimes. Part of the problem is how we have marketed the whole thing of farming. If you look at many magazines in Africa, Uganda, they're going to have a picture of a farmer very dirty, no teeth in the mouth, with a hole, with like seven kids on our back. That's not the image we want. The picture they have is because we have been fed, the mind has been fed to have this image of dirty business, dirty business, dirty business. But all this dirt that you see in the farms, it's wealth. Because that is manure, you're going to sell that manure. Everything there is wealth. You can sell this manure. But we use it in the grass that these animals feed on. We use it. But also, if someone comes and they want maybe some big amount of manure, we'll give it to them. Doesn't mean you grow your own feed? Yes, we do. We grow our own feed. We have different pastures for the animals. We grow maize for the chicken and the pigs. So we grow different things. Maybe you can make it a bit more profitable. But where we're going right now is where we have some bit of the local chicken. The advantage they have of other breeds of chicken is that you don't have to have a large number to make profit. So a client will come to us and they want you to breed for them. They'll say, someone prayed for this yesterday. You breed for them until about one month, sorry. And then they'll pay you and then they'll take the advantage. So you do that business too? Yes, we do. These are local breeds? These are local breeds. So I want to understand, is this expensive more than the broilers? Yes, if you're selling the meat, for example, you're going to... a kilo of this, if you're selling kilos, you're going to give you about 18,000 per kilo. Broilers are going to be about 8,000 per kilo. You see that? So the difference is quite big. Does it mean this one takes a long time to grow? No, it doesn't. Because you can also sell it at about four months, five months. It depends on how you raise it. So the trick I'll give you, if you want to raise it and sell it for meat on a commercial scale, then you have to lose something. If you want them to be free range, they won't be as hard. They'll take longer to grow. If you want them free range, they'll take longer to grow. But they'll be very hard, which many people like. But if you want to raise them and sell them as they are, maybe very fast intense, then you can sell it at four months. But the meat won't be hard because it hasn't exercised and all that. So then you can choose which one you want. If you have maybe time on big land, let them be. Let them be. The local bridge? Yes, these are the local bridge. Some of the chicks you've seen there, some of the eggs are from here. And down the other side, we have another house like this. So some of them are from here, some of them are from down. Those chicks that you've seen, they're about 150-something chicks there. So a customer asked for... We always have customers that ask and say, can you get me maybe 100 chicks? Then they pay in advance, they book in advance, you get them, and then you call them when the chicks are ready or if they want you to raise them for a month, you then raise them for a month for them. How did you start? At first, I made so many mistakes. I went to a government farm in Yentebe and I bought croillers. Now, croillers are duo-puppas buds, meat and eggs. And they're also quite prolific in terms of laying. But the mistake was that I started with zero experience. Zero, zero experience. And so out of 500, I think I lost about 300. Yeah, because I really... there's that first vaccine that they get. It's like an injection. If you miss that, you can... if you get that case, you can have all your buds just drop off one by one and it has no cure. So those are part of the mistakes that I said earlier. But the main... the main issue was that I had no experience. Zero experience. If you had no experience, why did you want to venture into a poultry farm? Well, I first had pure passion and zero experience. It's like if you... you want to play a certain way. Maybe you want to be a soccer player and you really want that ball. But then the role of the coach, you may be the best player in the world. Like Messi is the best player in the world. But then... I know he's the best player in the world. You're going to have to... the coach is there. You may be the best, but the coach is there. He's going to integrate you into a system where you know and he can get the best out of you. After making those mistakes, I had to go and start looking at different options. Where was the mistake? Where was this? Where was this? Where was this? And then I came back and I knew what I was doing. So that's why I'm advising everyone that once you start, you must do enough research. I've met with professors. I've met... I've done extensive research. Even now, to this day, I still make enough research because I know there are areas where you can improve. There is no one that is a custodian of knowledge. You see? It's all about continuing to... How long have you been doing this? 10 years now. How many acres does this land sit on? This is about 40 acres. You started 10 years ago? Yeah, at first I was trying, but it wasn't really taking off. Because of the apple? You can't balance it because if you have this small profit, you're going to... Oh, you take it back to the apple? Ideally, you're supposed to plow maybe 50% at least. Okay. But right now, if I was an alcoholic right now, I would look at these buds and say, each bud is about 40,000 here. And I have like... in total, plus the ones down, I have about 500 something buds. So I'm going to look at that, and I'm looking at 40,000 times 500. You know what? Let me call a truck. Then I'm going to call a truck, and then I'm going to go and take it to the bud. What has been your biggest challenge? I think the government is not doing enough in terms of market. That's one. Supporting farmers. If you have your maize, and the price of maize is 200 shillings, we had that crisis one time. If the maize is now 200 shillings, you're not going to get a profit. The government ideally would have had somewhere where it can buy your maize at maybe 500, 600, and then they store it. You know the way it is in Tanzania with cashew nuts? When the price for cashew nuts falls, it comes and helps. They support the farmers. Here, if you make the losses, you make them alone, without the government. And I respect my commander-in-chief, the president, but then that is somewhere where he can improve. The other issue is the commitment of workers. Some workers don't share your vision. You have a worker, you have a plan, you lay out the strategy for them, but as soon as you turn your head, this worker is doing his own things. They don't share the vision, they just target workers. They have specific things that they want from this place and they want to steal from you. They want to do everything that you don't want. Another one is the fake drugs on the market. Fake drugs? Yes, fake drugs on the market. Another challenge I had before it was improved was because the local breed is rare these days on a large scale. So you take your eggs to the hatchery and you would find that they have sold your eggs. You see? Because someone wants local birds. He is going to come. Now, if you look at them critically, some of them, and you don't know, you can think they are Corillas. But the difference is that these ones, they sit on their eggs. Corillas don't sit on their eggs. Now, if someone knows that this gentleman has local birds and you take them for hatching, he's now going to call someone that has been looking for local birds. You say, you know what? They are local birds and then he's going to switch. And you know when they are chicks, you cannot tell. So he's going to switch them for you and he's going to give you Corillas. Then you realize it like after like a month. You realize because they are growing really fast compared to this. And you say, this man gave me Corillas. So but that one was sold because you have to follow up with it. You don't just allow it to go. So you see, this is the money I was telling you about. We make sure this is from chicken. We make sure we don't throw it away because we use it. So everything on this farm is self-sustaining. If I've cleared out layers, if I've cleared out the broilers up there, if I've cleaned down there under the pellets with the chicken, the local chicken, I'll heap them here when the time is right. Get them, spread them out on that Russian comfra which the chicken will eat, on that matoke which we shall sell and get money. You going to the beef farm with that? No, it's okay. They are friendly. Trust me. Trust me. Trust me, I wouldn't be here. I noticed that they are friendly. So you see, they are mining their business. Everyone knows where his hive is and our hive. So they are mining their business. So we have some hives that are still in the trees. What we did, we brought them, put them in the trees, they got colonized. So the ones that get colonized, we bring them here. Colonized? Just like Africa. Yeah, just like Africa. See the small hives over there. That's what I was telling you that we get them when they are colonized. Each hive that is colonized, we go deep in the night. How do you understand how are they colonized? Like the bee comes. The bees find themselves. They just come with their queen. They settle there with the queen. They call colonizing that hive. So they will clean out the hive. If the hive is not suitable for them, they will run away from the hive. Every box, these boxes that you see here, every colonized hive down there will get it and add it to these boxes and pile. Like the way you are seeing these ones. This one has to be put here. All the way to up there. So right now we have a total of 150 hives and it may be the most profitable according to the experts. Even if I was to get 2 million from each hive every year. If I have 150 hives, that would be 300. I think that would be because you are best twice. This guy is a millionaire. This is the garden of Eden man. He got cassava so I can live here. Because I can blend the plantain and the cassava and make my fufu from here. This place looks huge. It is huge. What do you do here? So this is a paddock. We release some of the cows to come down here. Especially in the morning because they are cleaning their crop. They will come down here and spend some time, eat some little grass here drink some water over there and then go back up. This is a store for the pigs. The pig unit is here. How many pigs do you have? Right now I have 45 but the maximum I have had is 300 but because of swine fever every time I get a bunch of 6 months, 7 months I sell at once. That is the structure for the pigs and the second silage pit that I was telling you about. I think because I am biosecurity we cannot venture. Will you encourage more youth of Africa to venture into agriculture? The market is not well structured but the market is there. Because the opportunity is there. No one is going to give you the money that a pig farm is going to give you. Your own pig farm your own chicken farm no one is going to give you that money. I also encourage my workers here I teach them, most of them come here they don't know how to make silage. They go through the process with me. When he goes back to the village even if he has a very local cow he knows that he can make silage he knows he can use AI two years time he has a cow that is giving him maybe 15 litres from that local cow he has sold it and he has bought a young one so you don't just come here and pass through the phase come work for me go and stay the same I try to treat my workers like human beings, like my brothers I try to make sure they come here and if you notice they are free with me so I try to make sure when they come they don't go as they came they have learnt a lot what are the reasons for Africans watching us across the globe? Africa I think we are the youngest population in the world and we are much, much bigger than all the European countries in terms of space and I think we can do much more we need to change our mindset we need to also the governments need to help us but don't make policies that only promote selfish interests make policies that are decent and help the young people put programmes like PDM for us in Uganda here that you know will benefit everyone that is in Africa but other than that we have the potential to be the greatest continent we have the potential to feed the world we only have to start working now