By Prossy Nandudu
As the country prepares for the second planting season of 2024, majority of the farmers are now looking for seeds.
This follows an advisory issued by the agriculture ministry to farmers on Wednesday, that the current rains are an indication of the start of the second planting season.
While many farmers prefer improved or hybrid seed, a bigger section of the farming population prefers farmer-saved seed, said to be cheap, affordable and accessible.
According to Agnes Nambalirwa, a maize farmer from Buikwe district, a kilogramme of improved maize ranges from sh7,000 to sh10,000.
“Because I farm on less than an acre, I usually buy from shops and supplement with the seed I save whenever I harvest maize. I look out for the bigger cob and hang it in the kitchen,” she said.
On how she manages to keep the good seeded maize for the next season productive, Nambalirwa said she uses traditional ways of preserving seed, that she learnt from her parents in the 1970s.
“My mother used to hang big cobs of maize in the kitchen, while still in their covers. Whenever we would cook, the soot kept piling up on the cobs that would be hanging.”
She said the soot keeps away insects and that small heat from cooking further keeps the grain safe, so that is what I do,” she added.
“For beans, we used to harvest the ripe pods and also hang them upside down in the kitchen or shed in the compound, these would only be open time for harvest,” she added.
Her ideas are not so different from Nnalongo Sarah Muwonge, a vegetable farmer from Busukuma, off Gayaza road, who said she has used sukuma wiki seed for close to two years now.
“When I buy new seed, I immerse it into ash for about a week before planting, as a treatment so that pests and disease don’t easily attack the plants. When the plants get to a point of generating seed, I harvest the seed, dry it and then keep it in ash,” Muwonge said.
She added: “If I want to have a new plant, instead of going for a seed bed, I break off the tips of the grown sukuma plant and then plant it afresh. As I get new plants, young leaves also grow from the mother plant, that is how I have maintained my small vegetable garden for two years.”
Muwonge, who was part of the recent launch of the organic farmers market in Nsambya, a Kampala suburb, is among the many farmers who prefer planting their saved seed.
Her actions and those of Nambalirwa are examples of farmer-managed seed systems that stakeholders want the Government to recognise.
Unfortunately, this kind of system has not been embraced by the Government and key players in the seed sector, according to Joshua Aijuka, the head of programmes at PELUM Uganda.
Improved and imported seed
Agnes Kirabo, the executive director of Food Rights Alliance (FRA), said the traditional seed systems have been suppressed by improved and imported seed, especially by the elites.
“Our food system has been attacked and captured by elites and people have to plead to NGOs and government programmes for seeds to plant and have some harvest, yet farmers used to save their seed which used to meet all the nutritional requirements. Today, they are being discriminated against and focus is now on new seed or improved seed,” Kirabo said.
She said, although indigenous seeds can become a profit-making enterprise, there haven’t been any deliberate efforts to make them profitable.
“Indigenous, call it farmer[1]saved seed, can be profitable if Government prioritises them to attract public funding research, so that they can help in the country’s industrialisation agenda,” she added.
Her remarks were supported by Jane Nalunga, the executive director of the Southern and Eastern Africa Trade Information and Negotiations Institute (SEATINI) Uganda, a non-governmental organisation that promotes trade-related policies.
“Today, we import seed from Europe. These seeds are expensive, one tin of tomato seed, which can be planted in one acre, goes for sh800,000. This is too costly for a smallholder farmer,” she said.
Relating to the COVID-19 experience, Nalunga said the outbreak of the pandemic led to a shutdown of the better part of economies the world over, noting that during the period, food came from smallholder farmers.
“What COVID-19 taught us is that we depend on smallholder farmers to produce food and that these depend on their seeds to grow the food we want. We need to take back the control of our seed, because anyone who controls your seed, controls your food,” she added.
Stakeholders
Commenting on reports that indigenous or seed produced by farmers is inferior, Edward Erongu, a senior seed inspector with the agriculture ministry, said discussions are ongoing to find an appropriate place for seed coming from farmers.
“Farmer seed is recognised in the informal seed sector as per the seed policy. However, discussions are ongoing with key stakeholders on how to include such seed and farmer-saved varieties into the formal seed system,” Erongu said.
Nelson Masereka from the Uganda Seed Traders Association accepts that communities, through farmer seed-managed systems, have a role to play in seed production, but there is need for capacity building if they are to produce other crops, such as hybrids, maize, rice and sunflower.
