Often times, we get a glimpse of God’s plan for something, but He doesn’t always let us know how His plan is going to come about… that is until it’s His timing for us to know. Since purchasing the land for our farm last August, many pieces of the vision have been coming together. We took possession of the land in early September 2022 and immediately began tilling and preparing the fields for planting. Since then, we’ve grown and harvested maize, beans, peanuts, and we are currently growing a large variety of other crops.
Raising broiler chickens and teaching others how to raise them is a HUGE part of the overall vision for our farm, but we thought it would be another year or two before we could begin doing so since we would first need to build caretakers quarters, chicken houses, storage facilities, etc., on our property. These are things that require a lot of capital investment to even get started, but God has advanced that timeline by orchestrating a very unexpected opportunity for a much smaller investment to fast-track us into this new project!
This opportunity is so incredible because of all the fine details God has brought together, things that He has literally been orchestrating for years, and that we simply don’t have the space within this post to share!
In summary, we will be partnering with Young Africa, a well-known and reputable organization that has been around for more than 30 years. They operate trade schools to teach young adults a trade, giving them a better chance of securing employment and providing for their families. They have nine training centers in five countries throughout southern Africa, including one less than half-a-mile down the road from our farm.
For more than 14 years, a man was utilizing Young Africa’s facilities to raise broiler chickens, and he also taught the trade to their students. His chicken business was doing so well that he decided to start his own farm in another city, vacating their facilities. While this was great news for the farmer, it meant that Young Africa could no longer teach chicken rearing from that trade center until they found someone else to raise chickens there. Our farm manager found out about this and after some negotiating between our organization and Young Africa, we are entering into a new long-term partnership where we will begin raising broiler chickens and teaching how to raise them right there on their 200-hectare property. They already have 6 chicken houses that will hold a total of 3,000 broiler chickens. They have the feeders and equipment, storage, security, and even a place for our caretakers to stay.
If that were not enough, the Lord brought us a new team member with a degree in animal husbandry and experience raising chickens in a commercial environment. His name is Milagre, and he will be tending to the chickens and teaching the students the hands-on portion of their education where they will help raise and care for our chickens. Young Africa estimates 40-50 students per month going through their program.
Because of the revenue from the sale of the chickens and receiving a portion of each students’ tuition, we estimate that in just 6-8 weeks from the purchase of the first chickens, we should earn enough cyclic revenue to make our farm’s current operation level self-sustaining! Praise God for this blessing! Once we have a self-sustaining farm operation, we will be able to focus more on raising the capital needed for the previously mentioned facilities, which will allow us to expand the chicken production. When combined with the other plans for the farm like raising goats and an aquaponics system, these will eventually help provide a level of sustainability for all of Hope of a Nation’s programs in Mozambique.
