By Aloysious Kasoma
About 7 million households in farming will miss out on extension services after the government’s decision to scrap the sh39b extension services grant in the next financial year.
Speaking to New Vision in an exclusive interview during the Agriculture Extension week held at Kabira Country Club in Bukoto last week, Masudio Margret Eberu, the Publicity Secretary of Eastern and Southern Africa Famers Forum [ESAFF], said extensional services are highly needed by small scale farmers, especially in the areas of technology.
“There are so many farmers stuck with rudimentary methods. The integration of technology in extension services had helped many farmers at the production level with improved means like tractors. Even at the post-harvest level, we need a lot of technology,” she suggested.
Masudio said the government decided to cut off the budget, citing factors like non-performance, but warned that the slashing of the grant will delay the progress of agriculture production by 40%.
Consolata Acayo, the Commissioner for Communication at the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF) said that the country has over 4,000 extension workers receiving the grant support through means like fuel, visiting farmers, and procurement among others.
She estimated the ratio of extension workers to farmers at 1 to 1500 and due to growing districts and population, the demand keeps growing.
“They were supposed to cover 146 districts with one extension worker covering 2 to 3 sub-counties, we needed more extension workers on top of the 5,000 extension workers that were needed in 2016,” she explained.
According to Uganda Bureau of Statics (UBOS) figures for 2022, substance farming represented 80% of the total households in Uganda with agriculture as the main economic activity for most of the households.
The chief guest, Dr. Patrick Okware, who represented the Minister of Agriculture Frank Tumwebaze, said that the ministry is engaging the Ministry of Finance to reconsider the funding of the agriculture extension conditional grant in the next financial year.
In the financial year 2016/17, the Government, through the MAAIF has formulated the National Agricultural Extension Strategy to guide, harmonize, and implement agricultural extension services to farmers, farmers’ groups, and other actors in agriculture value chains throughout the country.
