Vitacress Salads and other UK food companies take on the Thousand Trees Challenge

Vitacress Salad’s Technical Director, Helen Brierley, joined seven other women from the UK food and farming industries to take on the Thousand Trees challenge of planting 1000 trees in just three days and raising £75,000 for Farm Africa. We’re thrilled to confirm that they successfully achieved this challenge completing it with enormous passion and determination.

The group worked alongside young female Ugandan agricultural entrepreneurs to dig 1000 holes by hand and plant avocado, jackfruit and mango trees on over 80 acres of farmland in just three days. The fruit trees will not only boost soil quality and food security but provide coffee plants with shade; Arabica coffee beans naturally grow under tree shade.

The group learnt about different soil types and how this affects the ease and efficiency of planting the trees. Local farmers showed them the importance of positioning the young trees to ensure best sunlight and water from rain fall.

Coffee is Uganda’s most valuable crop, and the majority of the country’s beans end up in the cups of European coffee drinkers. Despite coffee’s profit-making potential, many of Kanungu’s coffee farmers struggle to make ends meet.

With funding from the European Union and UK aid from the UK government, Farm Africa is working in Kanungu to help coffee farmers sustainably produce and sell high-quality coffee, and provide women with the support they need to increase their incomes and earn a fair share of profits from coffee.

As a company with their own farms and farmers, Vitacress Salads is delighted to be supporting Farm Africa’s Thousand Tree Challenge and in turn raising the farming community globally.