The Ministry of Agriculture has donated a tractor valued at shs140 million to Soroti Catholic Diocese in Eastern Uganda.
The tractor was handed over by the Agriculture Minister, Frank Tumwebaze to Fr. Samuel Ebietu Echelu the Soroti Catholic Diocese Pastoral Coordinator in Kampala.
“I am happy that religious groups have taken heed of the NRM manifesto to take part in agriculture to help the economy. I thank the Catholic Church and other religious denominations that have oriented their followers into agriculture. We shall continue with government support to give out these structures,”Tumwebaze said.
He noted that whereas in the past, government mainly supported smallholder farmers, it is high time the large scale farmers also benefitted from similar government programs.
“For many years government has targeted small holder farmers and our interventions have not been in vain. Indeed the numbers of people who have moved from subsistence farming to commercial agriculture has gone up. We now need to motivate people to use their big chunks of land into agriculture.”
Minister Tumwebaze explained that currently, only 34.4% of Uganda’s arable land is under agriculture, noting that it is high time more chunks of the country’s arable land are utilized .
He however noted that government will continue giving incentives like machinery and prioritizing people with big chunks of land, be it individuals or organisations like church to ensure more land is used for agriculture.
Over 65% of our arable land is not yet opened up. This is a call to everyone with big chunks of land to put it into agricultural production. Even if you are a cattle keeper, cows can co-exist well with big acres of coffee and cassava. You will have 200 acres for cow and 100 for cassava or coffee. This is how we shall be able to meet the national and international demand for certain commodities,”Tumwebaze noted.
Fr. Samuel Ebietu Echelu, the Soroti Catholic Diocese Pastoral Coordinator said the diocese has institutions like nursery, primary, secondary and technical schools as well as other various schools that he said will be supported in a bid to promote agriculture not only for sale but for also feeding the learners and communities.
We thank you for this offer. I want to pledge that with this offer we will make the best use of it. It will be for the benefit of our community .”
The State Minister for Works, Musa Ecweru who attended the function said he will ensure the tractor is not abused but rather used effectively.
“This donation is timely now that we launched the parish development model to help increase production. We want religious leaders to be part of the people to benefit from the Parish Development Model and they help preach this message to their followers,” Ecweru said.
