Butende · Uganda

A working farm, rooted in the land it feeds.

Fortune Farms grows and mills its own maize, raises laying hens and pigs, and turns the waste back into premium fertilizer — supplying local markets with food they can trust, and giving an all-Ugandan team a steady wage.

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About

Founded by Alex & Miho Fortune.
Built by an all-Ugandan team.

Alex Fortune is a UK civil engineer who first came to Uganda volunteering in 2012, and promised he’d come back one day to build a farm. He and his wife Miho — a registered nurse — self-funded the whole thing, with no outside investors, and built it from nothing in about two years. It’s run as a philanthropic business: focused on profit so it can stand on its own, but here to do more than make money.

On the ground it’s run by managing director Tadeo Buyinza — a friend Alex kept in touch with since 2012 — and a team that’s entirely Ugandan apart from the founders. Almost everything the farm produces is sold or shared inside the community that grows it: flour for families next door, eggs for neighbours, work for local people.

See the latest tour →

Maize being milled into flour at Fortune Farms.

What we grow

Four enterprises, one farm.

Each one feeds into the next — maize feeds the hens, the hens feed the soil, the soil grows the maize. A closed loop, by design.

Maize

The staple crop. Grown on our own land, harvested, dried, and stored in the granary before milling. The reason we can feed everything else so cheaply.

Milling

On-site machinery turns our maize into food-grade flour for people and bran for feed — cutting our own feed bill by around 70% versus buying it in.

Eggs

A flock of laying hens — scaling toward 2,000 birds — housed in a purpose-built chicken house. Daily eggs are the steadiest income the farm has.

A young maize plant growing in dark soil at Fortune Farms.

Fertilizer

Chicken litter is windrow-composted with biochar into premium organic fertilizer — plus a liquid feed — that goes straight back onto our crops, or out to neighbours.

By the numbers

A working operation, in daily output.

5 acres

Of land under cultivation

2,000

Laying hens at full cycle

40–50 t

Premium fertilizer per clean-out

100 +

People the farm now supports

Live figures track on the stats page as we log them.

Members of the Fortune Farms team and neighbours together on the farm.

Why we do it

Two promises that run the place.

Steady work for local people.

The team is entirely Ugandan apart from the founders. We hire locally, train on the job, and the work already supports the families of our full-time staff and reaches well over a hundred people in the wider community.

Quality goods for local markets.

What leaves the farm goes into Ugandan kitchens. We sell flour and eggs at prices our neighbours can pay — and we never compromise on what those products contain, because the people eating them are people we see every week.

From the farm

Stills from the build and the work.

In motion

Two tours of the farm.

Filmed and uploaded by Alex. Two years between them — the difference shows.

Fortune Farms 2025 video thumbnail — **Fortune Farms 2025** · the most recent tour

Fortune Farms 2023 video thumbnail — **Fortune Farms 2023** · how it started

Get involved

Visit, or just say hello.

Alex and the team host visitors, and are always up for a conversation with people interested in working land somewhere outside the usual.

Drop us a note — replies usually within a few days, depending on connectivity at the farm.