Exclusive;4 acres Model- How Pius Olam’s City Gate Farm is Rewriting Wealth in Lango

By Frank Oyug

LIRA — Forget the idea that you need hundreds of acres to get rich from farming. In Amucha, Lira City, Pius Olam is proving it can be done on just 4 acres. 

Small Land, Big Returns  

City Gate Mixed Farm is built for daily cash flow, not seasonal waiting. Every morning, 25,000 layer birds drop thousands of eggs while 10 dairy Friesians pump fresh milk. Another 10,000 Kroiler chickens are raised for meat, plus nearly 200 free-range cattle roam the ranch section.

Inside City Gate famer

Even waste earns money here. Animal droppings are processed into premium organic manure and sold to local crop farmers. That’s circular farming in action.

Operations Manager Nek-Edwin Ian says the integration is intentional: “Approximately in a day, the farm is making fairly some good amount of money that esures return on investiment.” The message to young farmers: intensity beats acreage.

A Farm is Never Built in One Day

CEO Pius Olam says it starts with passion. “Farming to me is a passion. The love for animals always drives me,” he told the contestants. “Agriculture is the backbone of this country. Once you have something that brings you money daily, to me, it is a great business.”

But success comes with work. High-yield exotic breeds need strict biosecurity — “They can wake up sick, just like a human being,” Olam warns. Climate is another test. CityGate imports Boer, Savanna and Red Kalahari goats from South Africa, then conditions them to Lango’s weather. 

Even coffee is thriving. A demo plot of ‘Elite’ clonal coffee shows Northern Uganda’s soil can handle cash crops once written off as “central region only.”

Pageantry Meets Soil  

The Miss Tourism contestants weren’t just posing. They walked the poultry houses, watched milking, and touched the manure-to-fertilizer process. For many, it shattered the “farming is for the poor” myth.

Miss Tourism Uganda Northern Region Operations Manager Olal Jimmy, aka Winter, put it plainly: “Some people look at pageantry as something that spoils young girls. But with Miss Tourism Uganda, we are here to empower the girl child by pushing them to learn ‘ground jobs’ and sustainable development beyond the runway.”

One contestant summed it up: “You don’t need to start big. One chicken at home is enough for you to start farming and earning money.” She left vowing to expand her own goat project with eco-friendly housing.

Melisa-a pegeant in Miss Tourism Northern Uganda boot camp visited Olam's farm

The Lango Call-to-Action  

For years, Lango has imported eggs, milk, and chicken from Kampala. CityGate asks: why? The land is fertile. The market is here.

Olam’s advice to anyone starting out: show up. “A successful farmer should never be in a rush; a farm is never built in one day. The animals you keep must be happy. And how do you make them happy? You make them happy by putting your own footprints on that farm. You must step into that farm almost every single day.”

With Miss Tourism queens now preaching “ground jobs” and farmers like Olam proving the model, Lango’s 4-acre blueprint could be the region’s poverty reset button.