Address Poverty, Address Agriculture

The commentaries after the budget was read were that agriculture is not funded adequately and yet 80% of the population live off it. The budget allocations over the years have never favored agriculture. As a percentage, this has been less than 5%. You could argue that if you want to transform society, you should target the principal producers. In this the farmers. Economic growth theories indicate that countries that become industrialized see a proportionate drop in the contribution of agriculture to GDP. It is about 3 percent for the most developed countries.The argument at the moment is, build infrastructure and agriculture will take care of itself. I don’t think this is entirely correct, though that has been the cry over the years. It is said that farmers produce and stock the products with them but the roads are too bad and that the market is not available. I cannot argue with this theory especially if I don’t have the relevant data, but do farmers produce enough? And if they do, do they have a high yield? I don’t think this is true. I was talking to an agricultural specialist who came to Uganda to do some research on cassava production, which is one of the country’s potential poverty buster. He said he was amazed by what Uganda can produce, literally everything. But amazed too, that we were not producing much; which is also true. Indeed a few of our farmers go out to produce large volumes but I guess more than 99% of them produce for self-consumption and sell off the small excess that they produce to buy sugar, soap and to some extent the school fees  for their children. According to him, the problem is not entirely roads, but the un-business like nature of farmers. The post-harvest loss and the comfort people have that they have property even if it is not being used. He recalled two important cases. In one case a farmer from whom he had hired and was interested him in doing what he was doing to make money. He urged him but the farmer declined instead the farmer offered to give him additional land for free to plant more. Another occasion was when a family in Uganda which has thousands of acres of land simply offered to them to use it in exchange for nothing. He thinks this is an un-business like behavior.

I have written and said if we are going to transform the nation, you need to increase agricultural production and agricultural productivity. But this is meaningless unless people understand that they are not growing products for self-consumption. They should understand this activity as a process of emerging out of poverty. They therefore need a motivation to produce beyond self-consumption. Africa has not yet experienced the industrial revolution. Even the few countries like Kenya, with some manufacturing sector, the revolution hasn’t taken place yet especially in the minds of the people. If the people don’t get the feeling of producing for sell, why should they produce? Why waste your energy to do something that is not required?

Today, Uganda feeds its neighboring countries but in an informal manner. The business men who know where the market is look for the agricultural products from wherever they are and export them especially to Kenya and Sudan. With some additional government support through sensitization and infrastructure, it’s possible that the production and indeed productivity of agricultural production in the country can change.

Post-harvest loss occurs at different levels, when crops are harvested and taken to dry, there is some loss that is incurred in the process.  Maize, beans, even coffee is dried in a very elementary manner. It’s possible that by the time this is dry, the loss may go up to 20%. An article in the local press talked of post-harvest loss of upto 90%. This is ridiculous. Drying these crops on the bare ground impacts on quality as they pick dust, stones and other undesirable materials. Storage in another challenge; rats feast on these food crops. Indeed during harvest periods, there is a large number of rats in people’s houses. There is need to sensitize people about all these. Not only do they lose the actual product, but the quality suffers. There is need to do more, especially I terms of research, actual experimentation, monitoring and evaluation to zero in on the best farming practices. It looks like the current research is focusing on improved seeds but not the actual farming practices. There is need to develop simple irrigation practices that will ensure availability of water even during the dry times. Several countries have had green revolutions, how do they do it? If the 80% of the population are farmers and are poor, there is still a lot to do to remove poverty.