By Prossy Nandudu
Food markets such as Nakawa, Nakasero, Busega, Abayita Ababairi among others are to have special stalls that will be selling organically produced food items.
Currently the mentioned markets don’t have gazetted places selling organic food items. Organic foods are foods produced without the use of agro industrial agro chemicals such as fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides among others.
The above markets, also known as territorial markets, don’t have gazetted areas for organic foods, which makes it hard for people looking out for healthy food supplies.
The advantage of such foods is that they are immunity boosters, prevent lifestyle diseases such as high blood pressure, Diabetes, Obesity, eye complications among others.
This was revealed by Josephine Akia, the executive director of PELUM Uganda during the Uganda Agro ecology Entrepreneurs and Territorial Markets Meeting at Hotel Africana on Wednesday.
“By creating the above markets, healthier and organic foods will be accessed but also farmers who take time to invest in organic farming systems will earn a premium price. Because Organic foods attract higher prices compared to non-organic food items,” explained Akia.
The meeting that brings together farmers, producers, value chain actors, to brainstorm different ideas and issues affecting agro ecology producers was organized by the Participatory Ecological Land Use Management(PELUM) in partnership with Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA).
Ruth Nabagala from AFSA, which is the continental project for food sovereignty among African countries, said that by promoting territorial and diverse markets for organic farm products, there will be sustainable farming where the environment will be taken care of as well as the consumers.
“We are working to convince the masses to live the industrial way of farming to adopt the organic system, if we are strong and loud, we shall be heard by policy makers in agro ecology,” said Nabaggala.
