KAMPALA – The Ministry of Agriculture Animal Industry and Fisheries [MAAIF] plans to bolster control and surveillance strategies to counter the marked resistance of pests and diseases in crop farms across the country.
The Commissioner for crop Inspection and Certification in MAAIF, Paul Mwambu, says several crop diseases are resistant to chemicals and so are pests, which he said pose a potential danger to the country’s food security systems.
“These pests and diseases are a serious danger to our food chain, they can cause us a big challenge if we do not upgrade our technology and response. The climatic changes have brought us here,” Mwambu said while speaking to the media in Entebbe about the latest developments in the crops sub-sector.
Mwambu attributed the problem of pests and disease resistance to climate change, noting that trends have been observed countrywide. He said resistance is worse in some geographical areas, while it is mild in other areas due to different management practices at the farm level, temperature variations, and the different agricultural practices.
Mwambu said the pests are likely to be more devastating if they are not managed well, and may occasionally re-occur in even larger outbreaks especially where there is limited extension support, lack of practical solutions and fake seeds on the market.
“Emerging pests and diseases can be serious impediments to production and the ability to respond effectively to such pests will be necessary to achieve food supply targets,” he added.
He said the Ministry would work with regional research bodies in Eastern Africa to develop an early warning system that would also facilitate surveillance to enable collective management of pests within and those yet to occupy the ecologically suitable areas.
The Ministry in a Public-Private partnership with Feed the Future Uganda has worked out a comprehensive framework to facilitate surveillance and emergency response as a key mechanism to improve extension services to the farming community.
In the partnership, the ministry is expected to collect data on pests’ presence or absence through surveillance and monitoring as well as support the phytosanitary programmes.
The International Plant Protection Convention [IPPC] requires a country to have an active national plant protection agency charged with the surveillance of plants, with a keen interest in pests and diseases, the occurrence of outbreaks, and other calamities.
At least about 80 percent of Uganda’s households derive their livelihood from Agriculture, raising approximately 24 percent of the gross domestic product and 48 percent of export earnings.
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