KABUKALU, Uganda – Is there a road that leads directly from the farmer-help promises of world leaders in Rome this month to the small-scale farm fields of Uganda and Kenya?
Arthur Nsubuga, manager of a local co-operative in the countryside outside Kampala, thinks he has at least part of the answer – farmers getting together to help themselves.
The Kabukalu Co-op Savings Credit Society, along with sister production and marketing co-ops, is organizing a scheme to provide cheaper fertilizer and chemicals to members and to train them to grow seeds that will be made available to other members.
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“We will be using money farmers save and deposit in the savings branch to help farmers increase their production and income, which will make our co-operative stronger,” said Nsubuga as he showed the field where farmers will be taught to produce clean quality seed.
The co-operative also plans to build a feed mill and hatchery for fish farmers.
However, those initiatives are small-scale local solutions, affecting at most a few hundred farmers. The larger solution is not as visible.
As world leaders met in Rome in early June to talk about soaring food prices, food insecurity and hunger, they called repeatedly for more support to help small-scale developing world farmers increase production.
After decades of underinvestment, small-scale farmers now need access to affordable seed, inputs, credit and technology to increase production to meet food needs.
“There is urgent need to create more investment funds as a matter of urgency to make affordable credit available, triple the use of fertilizer to boost yields, develop early maturing drought-resistant high yield seed varieties and provide logistical support for handling disease control and value addition,” Kenyan agriculture minister William Ruto said.
Mary Lubega Mutagamba, water and environment minister and Uganda’s delegate to the Food and Agriculture Organization conference, called for intensification of agriculture. FAO general secretary Jacques Diouf called on member nations to invest $30 billion annually in production increases and hunger alleviation.
But how can that high-level rhetoric be made real on the millions of small-scale farms back home? The road from the rhetoric of Rome to the small-scale farms of Africa is long, winding and sometimes appears impassable.
In Nairobi, Kenya National Federation of Agricultural Producers general manager Lucy Mwangi said the answer lies largely with government. Investment in roads, infrastructure and irrigation must be made and input subsidies increased.
“If farmers are to get inputs they can afford, government subsidies on those inputs must be maintained and improved,” she said.
In Kampala, a week after the FAO conference ended with a high level declaration of good intentions, the Ugandan government presented a budget that made its first efforts to live up to the promises.
Finance minister Ezra Suruma announced investment of close to $6.5 million US for farm credit, help to provide 500 small tractors, money to subsidize inputs and an end to taxation on food processing plants within 30 kilometres of Kampala.
The World Bank’s representative in Uganda praised the budget for helping farmers and promising to improve roads.
However, European Union ambassador Vincent de Visscher was less kind. He told the Kampala New Vision newspaper that the government had failed to fulfill its promise to help boost agricultural productivity.
The budget was “poor for agriculture and rural development,” he said. “The supply of 500 walking tractors is just a drop in the ocean.”
The road from Rome may take years to travel.
