By Isaac Nuwagaba
The Government cannot end poverty when the household farmers are still using hand hoes as basic instruments of production, a report has said.
The research findings are contained in a report by a team of experts from Makerere University Business School (MUBS) Economic Forum.
“The smallholder farmer concept will never uplift people from poverty because you can’t have high yields per acre per crop due to the hoes’ inability to facilitate large-scale farming,” the team argues, adding: “It is our pleasure to recommend mechanisation of agriculture as the only way to boost agriculture and end poverty in Uganda”.
The team of researchers includes principal investigator Prof. Waswa Balunywa, Dr Fred Muhumuza, Prof. Julius Kikooma, Dr Agnes Nassuna, Dr Edith Balirwa Mwebaza, Dr Samuel Mayanja, Dr Ronett Atukunda, Dr Johnson Ssekakubo, Shakira Nagujja and Victoria Nabukeera.
With conservative projections suggesting that Uganda has the potential to feed a population of over 200 million people, the country has always produced below capacity expected with limited post-harvest handling strategies to export to external markets.
In a study that was conducted in two key maize–producing districts in each of the regions of central, western, eastern and northern regions in eight districts of Mubende, Luwero, Kasese, Kamwenge, Mbale, Iganga, Lira and Gulu, production was very low due to the use of hand hoes.
“Sometime back, there was a projection by the Government that there would be no poverty by 2020, but to end it, the income inequality must be bridged and this needs to be addressed right from what economic activity the majority Ugandans engage in,” Prof. Juma Waswa Balunywa, the former principal of MUBS, says.
While addressing a team of researchers on Thursday in Sezibwa Hall at Hotel Africana in Kampala, Balunywa regretted the fact that over 70% of locals who engage in agriculture use rudimentary tools of practice while doing both subsistence and commercial agriculture.
“It is absurd to find that we cannot even export what we produce with value added to it, especially coffee and maize,” he added.
Uganda hosts roughly 1.5 million refugees under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), but there has been a row over UNHCR’s importation of maize and failure to buy it from Ugandan farmers citing the poor quality of foods as the main reason for their refusal to buy from Ugandan farmers, according to Balunywa.
“Equally, in 2021 Kenya banned the importation of cereals from Uganda before South Sudan impounded trucks of maize flour on grounds that the grains had aflatoxins which is associated with post-harvest handling,” he added.
As a result of failing to sustain massive production, Uganda has had an import-export deficit of shillings three billion dollars annually, which according to the researchers is driving the country to continuously look for loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
“The World Bank can never allow African states including Uganda to subsidise agriculture and become independent. You find that our poverty is not our own making, but rather developed countries exploiting us are the ones condemning us to vicious cycles of poverty with their strings-attached financial aid and loans,” he said.
Balunywa advised that the only way to address poverty is to increase production in agricultural produce, which can only be done through mechanization of agriculture and manufacturing.
“Our production is still very low per crop per acre. We are deceiving ourselves by setting up steel factories because there is iron ore in Uganda. No, much of what they use to process iron ore is imported from outside creating jobs elsewhere,” he reasoned.
There is use of genetically modified foods in every home where they used to have granaries but today, for instance, the maize you produce can’t be replanted and it becomes an additional cost to a farmer.
“The terminator gene in genetically modified seeds is wiping away the pride of a Ugandan farmer while running after developed countries to supply us cereals and agricultural products for home consumption,” Balunywa said.
The researchers, however, noted that over 80% of the farmers store their maize using sack bags, followed by 30% storing maize by pouring it on the floor of their store which destroys the capacity to feed external markets.
“55% of farmers we interviewed reported being aware of aflatoxins while 45% did not know anything about it,” Nassuna said.
PHOTO CAPTION: Prof. Waswa Balunywa, the principal investigator addressing challenges of using hand hoe to end poverty. (Photo by Isaac Nuwagaba)
