Inside government plans to boost food security

KAMPALA-Food insecurity is one of the major challenges Uganda is still grappling with, according to Uganda Food Security Outlook Report for June 2022 to January 2023.

The report says season bimodal harvests in most of the Greater North and the Teso Sub-region were delayed and were expected to be below average due to below-average rainfall virtually across the year.

As a result, most poor rural households had below-normal seasonal income from crop sales and had limited availability of food stocks.

According to data provided by the Food Rights Alliance [FRA], at least 15 million people or so are threatened by food scarcity with many going without a meal.

The Executive Director Food Rights Alliance Agnes Kirabo says many people spend a night or so without a meal, yet are not sure if they would survive the next day.

“Over 66 percent of Ugandan children spend a whole day at school without a meal, while 29 percent of them under 5 are stunted, 3 percent are overweight and are obese.”

Diseases arising out of eating unsafe food are also growing to almost a million cases annually.

Last year, the President directed government bodies and institutions like the Uganda Prisons, National Agricultural Research Organisation [NARO], and Operation Wealth Creation [OWC] to massively produce food that would address the food insecurity in the country.

This followed a rapid survey carried out around the grain producing areas and discovered that low production in Uganda was due to late rains, erratic rains, high costs of production at farm level and commercial farms.

It was also observed that low production of food in the region, particularly in the Horn of Africa, was placing price pressures on the local food market hence the price escalation.

It was also established that seed quality remains persistently low but is exacerbated by declining seed production due to dropping purchases from government [OWC and NAADS] over the past two years when there was no distribution of improved seed among others.

Private sector players in the food value chain have formed an alliance between the Grain Council of Uganda [GCU], OWC, Uganda Millers Association, Community Agro Processors Alliance, and the Uganda Seed Traders Association to answer the call for food security.

Under this strategy, Government entities engaged in production with big chunks of unutilised land like the Prisons, UPDF, National Enterprise Corporation [NEC], Uganda People’s Defence Forces [UPDF], and  NARO were identified.

The Minister of Agriculture, Frank Tumwebaze said each participating institution used their already approved budgets under their respective accounting officers to focus on this programme.

“First, target was to help smallholder farmers through Parish Development Model [PDM] to try and produce on an intensive scale, and at the same time go for the large scale landholders and give them incentives to open up land and plant more so as to achieve and sustain the required usual levels of food security in the country.”

He added that “As Ministry of Agriculture, Animal, Industry, and Fisheries, having seen that the food security outlook in the country wasn’t good during the last season of the last part of 2022 due to crop failures occasioned by the prolonged drought, we came up with an initiative to encourage big land owners…to engage in large scale production of food and animal feed security.”

Tumwebaze said his ministry is also engaging with the ministry of finance to come up with a more friendly interest free loan facility for such large scale farmers given the fact that most financing facilities in commercial banks are not friendly to commercial farming.

He added that a technical committee of finance and agriculture officials with private sector representatives [from GCU] was set up and are discussing modalities of how such a facility can be structured to work for the intended beneficiaries.

These consultations would produce a structured cabinet paper that would guide the engagements on a sustainable basis.

In an interview with theCooperator Magazine after the meeting, the under-secretary, MAAIF, Segawa Ronald Gyagenda said some of the interventions are short, others and medium and long term but all intended to address food insecurity.

He said for the short term since the harvesting has started, different agencies are going to use the stores they have but those who don’t have stores have been advised to work with the private sector in their areas to develop arrangements for proper storage.

He said that government plans to establish national food reserves across the different parts of the country.

“That’s an idea which is on the table. The government has a grand plan to prepare and handle the produce that will come out of this intervention,” he says.

This strategy looks at a total production of at least 110,000 acres of land being cleared and planted in the coming season of March 2023, to grow maize, soybeans, and sorghum after failing to reach the target in the previous season with planting stopping in late September and early October.

The strategic food and seed production intervention was a resolution of Cabinet, following a tragic hunger situation that claimed lives in Karamoja, Teso and other parts of the country after prolonged drought situations due to climate change.

The intervention is expected to raise enough food to feed the country, while enough seed is produced and given to smallholder and large-scale farmers to produce food.

Several government institutions were required to produce different food crops with the Uganda Prisons tasked to produce corn, while NEC and OWC were tasked to engage in beans, corn, and others. NARO, through its different regional entities, was tasked to produce food depending on their regional and climatic advantages and strengths.

In Eastern Uganda, the National Semi Arid Resources Research Institute, in Serere was tasked to produce more sorghum, while Nabuin Zonal Agricultural Research and Development Institute in Karamoja, was also tasked to produce sorghum seeds, and Buginyanya  Zonal Agricultural Research and Development Institute was tasked with the production of corn and beans among others.

https://thecooperator.news/omoro-food-security-ordinance-in-offing/

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