By Joshua Kato
During the 2023 best farmers’ awards, Gayaza High School and Iganga Secondary School were recognised for their efforts in promoting food and agriculture in schools.
Gayaza is host of the annual school farm camp. Started in 2014, the camp is the largest gathering of teenagers purposely to discuss farming.
This is important because Uganda is a largely young population that nevertheless depends on agriculture for survival. Schools spend about 50% of their annual budgets on buying food for the students.
This means that if they encourage their students to put what they learn at the camp into practice, some of these expenses can be reduced.
Schools can easily engage in productive agriculture. Save for schools in urban areas, most schools in rural areas have got big chunks of land. Unfortunately, most of this land remains unused with no productive work.
If a school grew just five acres of maize per season, that will yield at least 10 tonnes of grain or seven tonnes of flour. Certainly, this can feed the learners for some time.
An acre of bananas can produce at least 70 bunches a month. These can supplement the flour. Vegetables can also be grown by schools, even in bags or planting pots.
