FAO representative in Kampala Percy Misika, last year told the media of how the governments of Ugandan  Japan and FAO, had made a deliberate strategic decision to focus on rice cultivation, and especially on varieties of the new NERICA rice.

"The different NERICA varieties offer a number of advantages: they grow well on the uplands and are resistant to drought while their yield is 30 percent higher than that of local varieties, and they produce a long grain rice with good flavour and high nutritional content which matures in three months or less when the rains are regular".

Today, upland rice-growing in Uganda is a success story that, according to FAO, NERICA rice growing has in the last three years served as a new model for its adoption in the whole of the East African region.

First it was grown for consumption and security against hunger. Today it is being grown for sale in Uganda and within the region.

Since the recent launching of the common market of the five countries of the EAC, Kenyans have categorically assured Ugandan farmers that Kenya would buy all the maize they produce because Kenya does not produce enough maize for their consumption yet Ugandans who eat less maize than the Kenyans, produce more maize than the Kenyans do.

On top of producing a lot of maize, Uganda is a leading producer of bananas in this market of 130 million East Africans most of whom eat bananas. If government were to invest more in our farmers, especially in the womenfolk, poverty would be banished in our homesteads fast.

Luckily for Uganda and unluckily for most members of the community, we have been producing more food than   the rest. This means that if our farmers were given incentives to produce more, Uganda would without doubt be the food basket of the region soonest.

Ugandan farmers have capacity to grow all types of fruits if they were taught how to add value to their produce and shown where to sell what they produce at a profit.

Uganda is the leading producer of coffee in the region but unless those who produce it can add value to it instead of selling coffee beans like they are doing today in the 21st century, their hard work will have gone to naught.

Our farmers who produce cereals for example, don't know that World Food Programme has capacity to buy everything they produce, and at a market price. As a result, they get ripped off everyday by traders under government's watch.  

Also the women who have been growing tobacco for years have no idea that tobacco makes for lucrative business.

It is in the above that lies the biggest government let down of the farmers hence the urgent need for government to make good its unfulfilled promises to the people who keep leaders in power.

Investing more in the farmers is not a privilege. It is a government obligation.

July 9 - 15, 2010 blog comments powered by Disqus

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