Minister Tumwebaze explains gov’t move to support smallholder, large scale farmers increase production

The Minister for Agriculture, Frank Tumwebaze has explained the government deliberate move to help both smallholder and large scale farmers engage in large scale commercial crop production to increase their production.

Government recently procured 280 tractors to be given out to farmers in various parts of the country.

Speaking during the ceremony to hand over a tractor to the National Leadership Institute (NALI),Kyankwanzi on Monday, Tumwebaze explained that through this approach, government will provide equipment like tractors to organised and registered farmer groups, associations , cooperatives, individuals or any other  in a given locality to help them in increasing production.

He said this is aimed at ensuring food security not only in the country but in the region and continent at large.

“What is so far bothering the economists of the world is not anything else but rather food. The discussion globally is food amidst population explosion. What is on the mind of any serious planner is whether this increasing population is proportional with the food,”Tumwebaze said.

He said through a hybrid strategy, government wants not to only increase food production but also the number of agricultural exports for the country.

“We are targeting the smallholder farmers through the Parish Development Model which gives them quick access to capital in their saccos at the parish since these are mostly the unbanked group. Government has now put money for smallholder farmers through their parishes.”

“Government has also realized that the smallholder farmers also need the support of large scale farmers. We want to encourage large scale farmers to produce and support the smallholder farmers. You can produce foods for export and agro-processing but you can also have feed mills and we can partner with you to produce at subsidized costs for the smallholders farmers to afford.”

He noted that to ensure this, government will support all kinds of farmers in a bid to ensure increased production to feed both the local and international markets.

“Our strategy is to support both small scale and large scale farmers. Just imagine if more people planted coffee in hundreds of acres. If Kyankwanzi alone planted 300 acres of coffee, if you have more 1000 entities with land capacity as Kyankwanzi each planting 500 acres, that is half a million acres of coffee. This will mean we add 1.5 million bags onto our exports. This shows how a balance between large scale and small scale production can sustain our agriculture.”

The Ministry of Agriculture Permanent Secretary, Major General David Kasura said this approach will greatly help the country increase its agricultural exports.

“ We all know that 70% of our people are in agriculture but  they produce only 25% of the country’s GDP. This indicates there is lack of efficiency in this sector. That’s why we are emphasizing the issue of improving technology we are using for agriculture. We are going for mechanization of agriculture to ensure improvement by partnering with both large scale producers and small scale farmers to help produce massively crops like maize, coffee and cassava among others,” Brig Kasura said.

The Permanent Secretary explained that whereas large holder farmers grow crops at a large scale, their smallholder counterparts will be encouraged to be intensive producers of high value crops on small pieces of land.

“We have appropriate mechanization support for both producers. We will write MOUs with these people and nobody will take the tractors for free. There will be an agreement on how to use the tractors.”

Brig Charles Kisembo, the NALI director applauded government for the tractor that he said will help them ably produce agricultural products on their land measuring 12 square miles in Kyankwanzi.

“I have been disturbed so much by being a teacher for ideological development at a theoretical level and not implementing what we teach practically. It has been disheartening to take our students to see what others have done yet we sit on 12 square miles of land. With this tractor we are going to change things,” Brig Kisembo said.

He noted that NALI is to sit with the Agriculture ministry to see the enterprises they can venture into to contribute to the country’s social economic transformation.

 

 

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