And it by way it was mentioned earlier today right and he said don't you have some feed in your background? So yeah I ran a couple feed mills for the company back in the early days. He said who knows what God might be doing. So I took a trip with him sat down with the Minister of Agriculture told her about my dream of having demonstration farms and frankly she kind of rolled her eyes and said I got demonstration farms all over this country. So what do you need? I need a feed mill. Ok I'll build you a feed mill. So before I left we're having dinner at this big table and I get back home and Gary Michaelson in our Communications Group comes to see me and he says Donnie I want you to read this blog.
And there was some guy in the restaurant called heaven there's some guy at heaven overhearing our conversation who basically said “can you believe that not only does this greedy guy he can't make enough money now he's going to go to Africa and make money off the backs of poor Rwandan.” So that's encouraging when you're trying to do good for the world right? So Terry and I talked and we said you know what we'll start a foundation and we'll put all of our businesses in Rwanda in this foundation and nobody will ever say I'm trying to get rich off poor Rwandan, because I won't we won't we won't get a dime of economic benefit for what we do. So that's what we did we formed the African sustainable Agriculture Project (ASAP).
And you know as the at the time I was a CEO of Tyson and I really didn't want people thinking that you know number one I'm spreading the wings of Tyson's into Rwanda. I just want to help people and the Rwandans they you know like many other African countries great people, good resources, need opportunity. So, we formed African sustainable agriculture project ASAP foundation and off we went. And in 2014 I think it was about October we opened the first commercial feed mill in the nation of Rwanda. Now to get a picture Rwanda is about the size of Northwest Arkansas with about 12 million people.
Now those of us who kind of grew up in the country and know what it's like to go to the co-op and buy a bag of feed imagine no co-op, no commercial feed. And you know it's interesting God puts this great potential into the genetics of these animals but the you know it's sort of like you know a Formula One race car if you're if you're pouring kerosene it's not going to run very well right. And so you need well mixed well formulated feed in order for that animal in which God puts all this genetic potential to be able to fulfill its potential and to do what God created it to do.
And so as we looked at the poultry value chain the first limiting factor in the process was feed mill. So we okay solved that problem. Now Rwanda has plenty of feeding capacity. So not long after that we absorbed what was then called ()farms now it's the () farms so we have an egg farm. But we always had this idea that you know we could help reach a lot of farmers at the very base of the pyramid with broiler chickens the chickens that we eat. So with the help of USAID and by the way Americans thank you very much for your help. So with the help of USAID we began a project which in Rwanda means let's raise chickens for profit. So, we started this project.
And as simple as it is - on about the area of this stage we will go on to a small holders farm - by the way a lot of the smallholder farmers that we work with this is about the size of the yard that they have to work with. Very very small plot of land. So you need to concentrate the agriculture on that land right. So with a very small plot of land we put about a 100 chickens in this area and we grow them about 6 weeks. Now what we do is we supply the capital to build the coop to keep them safe. Right and we provide them the equipment they need to feed their chickens. And in about 6 weeks we've got a broiler ready for market; we help them market their Broilers and they get about 3 years to pay the coop back. And then we help them with microfinance so that they can they can take care of the reoccurring cost the charcoal to heat the chickens, the feed, the chicks themselves - that sort of thing. And still how are we doing?
We have about a hundred and twenty growers in the program now. We bring them in to a demonstration farm where basically we have 10 of these coops in a u-shape and we can walk them through - here's what it needs to look like the day before you get chickens. And then here's what a here's what a coop full of day-old chicks looks like. And here's what a coop of chickens that are one week old, two week old, three, four, five, six, clean-out, get ready again. And so in about three or four days we can bring growers in and teach them everything they need to know about how to be successful. Now to get a picture of some of the growers that we're working with, the average grower in the rural areas in Rwanda - the average person in rural Rwanda the household size is about 5.2. The average household income household income 27 dollars a month.
You stopped by the convenience store and get a coke on the way into the conference this morning? I spent about a buck and a half doing that right? That's a day and a half maybe almost two days’ worth of income for the growers that we work with. But with the little help on the capital side, a lot of help on understanding how to create a new business, we've been able to see growers like Frosene - I go up to see her coop scoop - she's so proud of it and by the way I look in and it's perfect it looks just like the training coops that we see at our demonstration farm.