By Johnisani Ocakacon
Farmers in Nwoya district have been tipped to practice climate-smart agriculture that sustainably increases productivity and system resilience, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the region. Alfred Kilama, the Nwoya district production officer, said if farmers are to improve and boost their production, they must practice climate-smart agriculture and embrace micro-irrigation systems as a measure to deal with the effects of climate change while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Kilama called on farmers to adapt and build resilience to climate change to ensure food security and development under a changing climate through the use of new technology in farming.
Jacob Ojok, the Nwoya district secretary for production, advised farmers that climate patterns have changed and they should take agriculture more seriously by adopting modern farming methods to avoid incurring losses. He said farmers must learn to store water for production because most rely on the rain seasons, but now the climate pattern has changed, making it hard to predict rainfall. Emmanuel Orach, the Nwoya LC5 chairperson, asked farmers to use the available land to cultivate crops and improve food security in the district.
“Nwoya is one of the districts with the worst history of charcoal burning. All the trees have been cut down for commercial charcoal businesses. Therefore, I ask people to plant more trees to protect the environment,” Orach added.
He said they launched a campaign, ‘Nwoya Go Green’ last year as an initiative to plant 1.2 million trees in the next five years. Over 265,000 trees have been planted, and free seedlings were distributed to encourage people to plant more trees. Angupale Swadik Alemi, the Nwoya deputy resident district commissioner, encouraged farmers not to wait for the rain, but to use the irrigation system provided by the Government to boost farming and increase production.
“The Government is putting a lot of resources in the communities to ensure that people come out of poverty. Therefore, people must embrace the use of climate-smart agriculture to increase productivity,” he said.
Brenda Lapura, a vegetable farmer in Bidin, Kal parish, said she is one of the farmers benefiting from micro[1]scale irrigation, which is improving her household income
