Counterfeit agricultural inputs keeping Uganda’s farmers in poverty

Arthur Nsubuga has been keeping poultry in Mukono District, approximately 25 kilometres east of Kampala City for 12 years but the last one year has been the most challenging with the dip in production as the counterfeit farm inputs took its toll.

Whereas he could achieve 95-96 laying percentage of the birds aged 33 and 44 week seven years ago, it had dropped to between 65-70 per cent last year with the rise of counterfeit feeds and agro-chemicals.

“When we carried out my own analysis of the feeds with the help of a private firm, we discovered that it contained only 20 per cent of the nutrients required for the birds due to adulteration. At the same time, some birds were dying even when we had vaccinated them at the right age,” Mr. Nsubuga said.

Mr. Nsubuga said though the birds have been reduced by 70 per cent to 4,500 to mininise the losses, he is also mixing the feeds and agro-chemicals himself after sourcing them directly from the manufacturers.

Mr. Nsubuga’s predicament reveals how widespread farmers in Uganda are grappling with the counterfeit farm inputs including animal feeds, seeds, and agro-chemicals thus affecting food security and livelihood of millions of the population.

According to the International Fertiliser Development Centre (IFDC), counterfeit agriculture inputs currently account for 30 per cent of agro sales in sub-Saharan Africa, where law enforcement agencies, ministries of agriculture and the private sector have not made any real headway in combating the vice.

Dr. Grace Abalo, the National Project Coordinators for Uganda for the Water Efficient Maize for Africa under the Nairobi-based African Agricultural Technologies, said the counterfeit farm inputs such as seeds have been exacerbated by seed companies that have mastered the art of supplying grain to farmers instead of seeds resulting into poor yields or not germinating at all, a claim seed companies denies.

“I think that is not being sincere. We have been taking our own measures like random inspection of our seed dealers to ensure that the seeds in their stocks are of good quality to our farmers. We are planning to start using e-verification technology next year to identify genuine and counterfeit seeds,” said Richard Musagazi, the chairman of Uganda Seed Traders Association.

Mr. Musagazi blames the government for counterfeit farm input especially seeds as it has a thin staff to track down unscrupulous traders.

This, Dr. Abalo says, coupled with unpredictable weather changes have ensured that farmers have little to eat, and discouraging the population from commercially investing in the sector.

Statistics from Uganda’s Ministry of Agriculture, Animal, Industry and Fisheries shows that the country’s demand for seeds currently stands at 35,000 tonnes but the 25 seed companies produces only 12,000 tonnes of seeds to the farmers, with maize accounting for over 60 per cent.

This has left majority of the farmers to persistently relay on seeds saved from the previous seasons or traded informally between neighbours for fear of purchasing counterfeits, even as such seeds generally produce far lower yields than genuine high yield hybrids.

Further, incidences of counterfeit agro-chemicals have also remained high currently standing at 40 per cent for the agro-chemical imports in Uganda and Tanzania and between 15-20 per cent in Kenya, according to CropLife Uganda- an association of agro-chemical importers in the country.

The high levels of counterfeit agro-chemicals that do not kill weeds or pests are making farmers lose billions of shillings in the agriculture sector, said Betty Atto, the CEO for Crop Life Uganda.

As such, Uganda’s former agriculture minister Victoria Sekitoleko said there’s need to pass relevant laws currently shelved in parliament to streamline the agriculture sector making it more productive to address issues of food security and source of livelihood.

According to Uganda’s National Budget 2014/15, the country’s agriculture sector employs 70 per cent of the estimated 34 million people but contributes t only about 21 percent to the Gross Domestic Product, with its annual growth figure stagnated as low as three per cent for the last two years.

“What this country needs now is to pass those laws in line with the agriculture sector,” Ms. Ssekitoleko said.
For instance, the Plant Protection and Health Bill 2010 that was tabled by then Agriculture Minister Hope Mwesigye, is still in parliament.

The Bill covers phytosanitary issues, seed health analysis, disease and pest surveillance, quarantine issues, and the movement of seed and planting materials for mainly import and export purposes.

The Biotechnology and Biosafety Bill 2010 which aims to regulate and control the application of biotechnology products (including transborder movement of germplasm), ensure value for money, and improve biosafety for people and the environment is still before Parliament.

The National Biotechnology and Biosafety Policy was approved and adopted by Uganda's Cabinet in April 2008.

Currently Uganda relies on three laws- Control of Agro-Chemical Act 2006, Seed and Plant Act of 2006 and Plant Protection Act of 1962- with little effect to fight counterfeit agricultural farm inputs.

Whereas the Seed and Plant Act 2006 stipulates that a person selling a substandard seed or selling a counterfeit commits an offence and is liable to a fine not exceeding Ush500, 000 ($190) or face imprisonment for a term not exceeding four years or to both, the Plant Protection Act of 1962 imposes Ush2, 000 ($0.76) as fine for selling counterfeit seeds.

On the other hand, the Control of Agro-Chemical Act 2006- deals more on regulating sale of agriculture chemicals but silent on penalties for traders involved in selling counterfeit chemicals.

This has encouraged unscrupulous traders to involve in selling counterfeit farm inputs because the penalties are low once convicted in courts of law, Dr. Fred Mukulu, the Mukono District production and marketing officer said.

“Currently, the penalties against a person involving in counterfeit farm inputs are very low. We’re proposing that some fines should be custodial; somebody must be jailed for one year or a high fine of more than Ush2million ($755)) to deter traders from selling counterfeits to farmers,” Dr. Mukulu said.

Ms. Sylvia Kirabo, the spokesperson for the Uganda Bureau of Standards, a government’s agency mandated to ensure that manufactured products or those entering the country meets the required standards, told The EastAfrican that fighting counterfeits in the agriculture sector lies with the agriculture ministry.

“Our work as UNBS is to develop standards which are supposed to be enforced by the line ministries- in this case agriculture ministry,” Ms. Kirabo said.

Ms. Kirabo said the UNBS is only fighting counterfeit fertilisers that enter the country through their Pre-inspection Verification of Conformity programme.

Agriculture Ministry spokesperson Connie Achayo says whereas it is the role of the ministry to fight counterfeit inputs, it is the responsibility of every stakeholder in the sector to fight the vice.

“I also admit that we are very thin on the ground in the fighting counterfeit farm inputs but the farmers also rarely report to us on where they bought counterfeit seeds, chemicals, and this makes our work difficult,” Ms. Achayo said, adding that that the nature of the business has made the ministry unable to assess the actual loss to the agriculture sector.

Dr. Robert Karyeija, commissioner in charge of seed inspection and certification in the agriculture ministry said the government is recruiting more staff to inspect seed producers across the country.

“We have recruited 23 new staff to deal with the inspection and certification of seeds. We are soon going to attach at least one staff to each seed producing companies to monitor their seed trade, right away from their gardens to the market,” Dr. Karyeija said.

Mr. Karyeija said whereas the ministry is also in talks with the Ministry of Internal Affairs to establish an agriculture police responsible for arresting those found involving in selling counterfeit seeds, it also plans to re-licence all the seed companies as a measure to streamline seed sector.

Scientists move to conserve East Africa's plant genetic resources

Crop scientists have embarked on a five-year project to conserve indigenous plant genetic resources in a move to improve food security across East Africa.

Plant genetic resources are diversity of seeds and planting material of traditional and modern varieties, crop wild relatives and other wild plant species which scientists can use in the development of improved crop varieties, resistant to pests and diseases as well as tolerant to changes in climatic conditions.

Dr. Fina Opio, the executive director at the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA) said the $8.5 million project funded by the Swedish International Development Corporation Agency, will see the scientists across East Africa including Somalia, Djibouti, and South Sudan, take forward efforts in collecting, store and sharing information on the available plant genetic resources.

“It will also enhance the utilisation of the conserved materials by completing the characterization, evaluation and documentation of the accessed materials. This will involve more work in ensuring that infrastructure for conservation is working under ideal conditions,” Dr. Opio said.

Dr. Opio said over 140,000 accessions (collections of plant materials from particular locations) of plants have so far been collected and conserved in the various national gene-banks in Uganda, Burundi, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Rwanda, and Sudan.

Of these, over 27,000 accessions have been adequately characterised and 1,416 accessions evaluated for various agronomic and nutritional qualities, yield potential and for drought tolerance and thus ready to be taken-up by farmers.

This comes in a wake of devastating effects of climate change, social and political unrest, invasion of alien species, inadequate recognition of the value of indigenous and/or traditional knowledge systems and the expanding population pressure, threatening the existence of indigenous plant species viable for plant breeding in the region.

According to the Food and Agricultural Organisation, the world population is expected to rise from the current seven billion people to nine billion by 2050, putting on more pressure on land to feed the escalating population.

Whereas the indigenous planting materials have low yields per unit area compared with the improved varieties, modern plant breeders normally revert to traditional plants to get the genes that are useful for breeding programmes to address a particular agricultural problem.

Dr. Abebe Demissie Tefera, the managing director at the Ethiopian-based Climate and Natural Resources Management Consulting told The EastAfrican that east Africa harbors various crops wild relatives that exhibit a large gene pool that could help to tackle challenges of climate change, pests and diseases.

Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya, Eritrea, and Sudan, for instance, have a wide collection of genetic resources including that of cereals, legumes, oils crops, millets and forage species as well as those with high pharmaceutical values such as Prunus Africana, Warbugia ugandensis, and Fagara macrophilla.

Dr. Abebe said sorghum and millet are unusually drought tolerant whose potential can be harness to increase production in the north east African countries in response to the adverse of climate change.

“The wild relatives of these crops probably hold the key to food security and increased agricultural productivity in the region as sources of genes for adaptive traits in the wake of climate change,” Dr. Abebe said.

Early this year, the African Orphan Crops Consortium consisting of the African Union -New Partnership for Africa’s Development; Mars Incorporated; World Agroforestry Centre; Beijing Genomics Institute; Life Technologies Corporation; World Wildlife Fund; University of California, Davis; iPlant Collaborative and Biosciences Eastern and Central Africa-International Livestock Research Institute, released a list of a hundred ingenious crop species whose genomes it plans to sequence, assemble and annotate to improve nutrition on the continent.

The list, which includes the African eggplant, amaranth, guava and cassava, finger millet, sorghum, is being disseminated so that researchers around the world can contact the consortium with suggestions for research needs regarding the selected species.
The research is to being conducted at the Nairobi-based African Plant Breeding Academy hosted at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), with improved planting materials offered to smallholder farmers throughout Africa.

According to the consortium, more than 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa consume orphan crops, thus boosting their main crop production and nutrition will help reduce hunger and malnutrition.

Globally, agriculture depends on the diversity of relatively few plant species, according to Dr. Abebe, adding that of the approximately 250, 000 identified and described plant species, some 7,000 are being used for food, with only 30 species providing about 90 per cent of the world’s calorie intake and only three species namely maize, wheat and rice supplying almost 60 per cent of the calories and protein in the human diet.

“In addition to being limited in terms of species diversity, the world’s genetic diversity is in danger of being lost. With the advent of modern agriculture, untold numbers of locally adapted traditional varieties have been replaced by the widespread use of genetically uniform high yielding modern varieties,” Dr. Abebe said.

Dr. John Mulumba, the head of Plant Genetics Resource Center in Entebbe told The EastAfrican that the seeds for Uganda’s indigenous crops are now available to farmers and scientists upon request.