Sugar Cane Project

Update : April 2022

At a recent meeting in Masindi, the CLDC Board decided to begin the first phase of building our Children’s Centre on the seven-acre site adjacent to the Hoima road where our sugarcane was planted. The sugarcane has now been harvested, and the site cleared and graded in readiness for building to begin. We shall no longer derive any income from sugar cane, but we are excited to start work at last on our main objective - building the Children’s Centre.
See News from Masindi for the latest updates

Sugar cane overview

Early in 2018 we were able to buy seven acres of land from a neigh­bouring farmer. In March that year, workers from the sugar cane factory in nearby Kinyara cleared the ground with bulldozers, provided us with sugar cane sets, and helped our local work­force to plant the land — in return for a percent­age of the profits from the first crop to be harvested in late 2019. Subsequent crops, with eighteen months between each harvest, should yield a substantial income, help­ing CLDC to become self-support­ing, and allowing us to move ahead with our key long-term project — building the CLDC centre for under-privileged and disabled children.

Early in the growing season, we pay local workers to keep the cane fields free of weeds. At harvest time, workers from the Kinyara sugar cane factory bring heavy machinery to cut the cane, leaving the discarded vegetation to rot down and provide nutrients for the successive crop. Harvested canes are taken back to Kinyara to be weighed and then crushed, starting the sugar extraction process.

In addition to our seven acres of sugar cane, we are renting a further four acres, adjacent to our own land, for a period of four harvests. These rented acres will be harvested midway between our own crops, helping to even out the income stream.

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