While the Pearl of Africa has always been touted as East Africa’s food basket endowed with beautiful weather; the deteriorating climate conditions and poor investment have suffocated progress in the agriculture sector and condemned it to obscurity in the latter years of independence.
For that, stakeholders in the sector now envy the old times because of the high productivity and the support provided to the farmers by the governments that immediately came after self-rule.
“In the 1960s and 1970s, we had strong advisory services to guide farmers on the best farming practices; there were strong cooperative societies to market farmers produce, in which quality was not compromised, and there was no corruption as it is today,” Uganda National Farmers Federation President, Charles Ogang, said.
Uganda inherited the economy based on agriculture from the colonialists in 1962, consisting of smallholder agricultural exports centered on coffee, tea, tobacco and cotton and the importation of consumer goods for the domestic market.
The crops were harvested and sold to the primary cooperative societies or private stores, in which, the primary societies sold the produce to the cooperative unions, and later to marketing boards at a government pre-determined prices prior to the harvest.
Coffee, for instance, was sold through the Coffee Marketing Board (CMB) whereas cotton was sold through the Lint Marketing Board (LMB).
The policy framework at the time, which was inherited from the colonial administration, emphasized the promotion of commodity exports, external financing to bridge the savings-investment gap, and the promotion of private investment by encouraging existing investors and creating incentives to attract new ones, including African entrepreneurs.
In addition, there was also a policy requiring all homesteads to set up granaries specifically to cater for food shortages.
And as such, the agriculture sector at the time contributed 46 per cent to the GDP compared to the current 40 per cent.
However, following the liberalisation of the economy in the late 1980’ and early 1990’s, the cooperative unions collapsed, leaving every farmer to sell their produce individually, decline in the quantity and quality of produce for export, and the gap created filled with the non-traditional exports-maize and beans among others.
The supply chain for the exported crops remained dominated by processing and trading companies.
And though the country still relies on the export crops- cotton, tea, coffee- the unstable prices have made them remain uncompetitive at the international markets.
Cotton, for instance, which experienced a decline in production in the 1970’s and 1980’s due to political instability and fall in prices, has remained at a low profile whereas tea and coffee has registered a tremendous decline due to climate change, and pests and diseases, and land fragmentation.
The production costs, too, have also increased compared to the post-independence days, according to the farmers.
“We used to grow maize, coffee, beans among other crops without the use of fertiliser. Nowadays to produce a reasonable output, you need to use fertiliser whose price is not that low,” said Mr. Augustine Labu, a farmer in Bukwo District, eastern Uganda.
The crisis in the sector, however, has been escalated by poor road networks and the minimal funding from the government, currently standing at only 5.7 per cent of its $4.5 billion budget for the fiscal year 2012/13.
This has made even harder for the few employed extension officers to move to the farmers due to the absence of transport means.
Though the government has previous pursued agricultural development policies and strategies – especially the Plan for Modernization of Agriculture (PMA), which was a multi-sectoral framework implemented between 2001 and 2009 aiming at transforming subsistence farming to commercial agriculture, minimal progress has been made.
The National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS), which was initiated in 2001 as a component of the PMA to necessitate implementation of the programme, failed to deliver the expected results as it was marred with corruption.
For instance, in the first phase of NAADS implementation between 2001 and 2007, Uganda spent $108 million in developing agriculture but this investment yielded little as farmers registered insignificant economic gains.
Although the second phase was launched in 2009 for a span of five years, estimated to cost $497 million, the programme was again plunged into controversy, misappropriation of funds and failure by the NAADS officials to reach to the farmers.
Uganda’s state minister for agriculture, Dr. Zarubabel Nyiira,says NAADS programme had a good intention but it was wrongly implemented by allowing NAADS officials to directly involve in purchasing inputs for farmers.
He said the agriculture sector is also facing a threat of a high population growth rate currently standing at 3.5 per cent per annum and expected to reach 50 million by 2025 compared to three per cent growth in agricultural production, a factor that has led to constant food shortages.
“Previously, we did not have the effects of drought and climate change because the ozone layer had not been destroyed by fires and carbon emission, we did not have river siltation, as it is today due to flooding which has resulted from land encroachment due to population pressure,” Dr. Nyiira, said adding that government is making efforts to increase investments in the previously powerful sector through provision of education and training services to farmers on the better farming methods.
While the Uganda government is encouraging value addition to the agricultural production for exports through a private public partnerships, there’s no serious commitment in ensuring that the processing industries are set up.
The Uganda coffee Development Authority, for instance, has laid down plans to set up a coffee processing plant in the next three to five years to add value on the coffee for exports in a private public partnership deal.
However, the success of setting up the plant will depend on the interests of the private sector in agro processing due to instability in the production of quality agricultural produce coupled with unreliable energy.
Mr. Gideon Badagawa, the executive director, Private Sector Foundation Uganda said it is only through agricultural modernization and value addition that Uganda will reap from its exports.
No comments:
Post a Comment