Research consultancy
Demystifying Uganda agriculture: mobilizing the community for production
Uganda‘s favorable soil conditions and climate have contributed to the country’s agricultural success. Most areas of Uganda have usually received plenty of rain. In some years, small areas of the southeast and southwest have averaged more than 150 millimeters per month. In the north, there is often a short dry season in December and January. Temperatures vary only a few degrees above or below 20 °C but are moderated by differences in altitude.
These conditions have allowed continuous cultivation in the south but only annual cropping in the north, and the driest northeastern corner of the country has supported only pastoralism. Although population growth has created pressures for land in a few areas, land shortages have been rare, and only about one-third of the estimated area of arable land was under cultivation by 1989
Major cash crops have been coffee,cotton, tea, and tobacco, although in the 1980s many farmers sold food crops to meet short-term expenses. The production of cotton, tea, and tobacco virtually collapsed during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
In the late 1980s, the government attempted to encourage diversification in commercial agriculture that would lead to a variety of nontraditional exports. TheUganda Development Bank and several other institutions supplied credit to local farmers, although small farmers also received credit directly from the government through agricultural cooperatives. For most small farmers, the main source of short-term credit was the policy of allowing farmers to delay payments for seeds and other agricultural inputs provided by cooperatives.
Cooperatives also handled most marketing activity, although marketing boards and private companies sometimes dealt directly with producers. Co-operatives had been very successful during the British Colonial period (see below) but later many farmers complained that cooperatives did not pay for produce until long after it had been sold. The generally low producer prices set by the government and the problem of delayed payments for produce prompted many farmers to sell produce at higher prices on illegal markets in neighboring countries. During most of the 1980s, the government steadily raised producer prices for export crops in order to maintain some incentive for farmers to deal with government purchasing agents, but these incentives failed to prevent widespread smuggling.
Favorable climate and soil conditions enabled Uganda to develop some of the world’s best quality tea. Production almost ceased in the 1970s, however, when the government expelled many owners of tea estates—mostly Asians. Many tea farmers also reduced production as a result of warfare and economic upheaval. Successive governments after Idi Amin encouraged owners of tea estates to intensify their cultivation of existing hectarage. Mitchell Cotts (British) returned to Uganda in the early 1980s and formed the Toro and Mityana Tea Company (Tamteco) in a joint venture with the government. Tea production subsequently increased from 1,700 tons of tea produced in 1981 to 5,600 tons in 1985. These yields did not approach the high of 22,000 tons that had been produced in the peak year of 1974, however, and they declined slightly after 1985.
The government doubled producer prices in 1988, to USh20 per kilogram, as part of an effort to expand tea production and reduce the nation’s traditional dependence on coffee exports, but tea production remained well under capacity. Only about one-tenth of the 21,000 hectares under tea cultivation were fully productive, producing about 4,600 tons of tea in 1989. Uganda exported about 90 percent of tea produced nationwide. In 1988 and 1989, the government used slightly more than 10 percent of the total to meet Uganda’s commitments in barter exchanges with other countries. In 1990 the tea harvest rose to 6,900 tons, of which 4,700 were exported for earnings of US$3.6 million. The government hoped to produce 10,000 tons in 1991 to meet rising market demand.
Two companies, Tamteco and the Uganda Tea Corporation(a joint venture between the government and the Mehta family), managed most tea production. In 1989 Tamteco owned three large plantations, with a total of 2,300 hectares of land, but only about one-half of Tamteco’s land was fully productive. The Uganda Tea Corporation had about 900 hectares in production and was expanding its landholdings in 1989.
The state-owned Agricultural Enterprises Limited managed about 3,000 hectares of tea, and an additional 9,000 hectares were farmed by about 11,000 smallholder farmers, who marketed their produce through the parastatal Uganda Tea Growers’ Corporation (UTGC). Several thousand hectares of tea estates remained in a “disputed” category because their owners had been forced to abandon them. In 1990 many of these estates were being sold to private individuals by the departed Asians’ Property Custodian Board as part of an effort to rehabilitate the industry and improve local management practices.
Both Tamteco and the Uganda Tea Corporation used most of their earnings to cover operational expenses and service corporate debts, so the expansion of Uganda’s tea-producing capacity was still just beginning in 1990. The EEC and the World Bank provided assistance to resuscitate the smallholder segment of the industry, and the UTGC rehabilitated seven tea factories with assistance from the Netherlands. Both Tamteco and the Uganda Tea Corporation were also known among tea growers in Africa for their leading role in mechanization efforts. Both companies purchased tea harvesters from Australian manufacturers, financed in part by the Uganda Development Bank, but mechanized harvesting and processing of tea was still slowed by shortages of operating capital.
The Government of Uganda (GoU) has identified agricultural commercialization as the stepping stone for reducing poverty in rural areas through the Plan for Modernization of Agriculture (PMA). PMA is a holistic framework for eradicating poverty through multisectoral interventions enabling the people to improve their livelihoods in a sustainable manner. With seven pillars1, PMA is part of the Government of Uganda’s broader strategy of poverty eradication contained in the Poverty Eradication Action Plan.
With financial support from the various development partners, the GoU has made considerable steps to operationalize the pillars of PMA and remarkable achievements have so far been made, thus making the country one of the most successful in terms of achieving high rates of agricultural growth and poverty reduction. One of the Bank Group’s assisted operations in Uganda which has contributed to the PMA objectives is the Area-based Agricultural Modernization Programme (AAMP), where the Bank has financed improvement in rural infrastructure with remarkable impacts.
The majority of the households in Uganda live in rural areas and this is where most of the agricultural activities take place. A minority of households that live close to urban centres obtain higher farm gate prices due to their close proximity to the market. On the other hand, remote households receive a much lower price for their products, and hence, may need to market more of their agricultural output, usually to middlemen, to generate sufficient income to meet their non-food consumption needs. Current estimates indicate that for cereals and beans, farm gate prices are about 20% lower than at the market place, indicating a high transport cost element. At the same time, greater market access raises prices received by farmers by about 20-40%. Furthermore, the existence of market and competitive prices offers farmers opportunities to produce more for the market, thus raising their incomes and livelihoods.
The contribution of rural infrastructures to total as well as factor productivity is well known. Evidence from the AAMP’s mid term review shows that villages that have better infrastructural facilities have more agricultural production, more marketed surplus and the farmers enjoy higher income. Also improved roads and water and sanitation facilities lead to improved school enrolment, improved household health, improved nutrition and enhanced value of agricultural production through agro-processing.5 Unfortunately, according to the MoWT, only about 10% of the 30,000 km of community access roads countrywide are in good/fair condition.
Research programmes in agriculture drive the extension or education programme that the research should actually be serving. What farmers need to know to be able to operate sustainably, both environmentally and economically, should drive the research programme. In the FFS approach, research is based on training needs or is a part of the training itself.
Through their participation in the field schools farmers can become a part of a wider programme of local, district and national research networks investigating agricultural production problems and developing local solutions for improving the sustainability and productivity of the country’s farming systems (FAO, 2000.)
The United Nations defines community development as “a process where community members come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems.”[1] It is a broad term given to the practices of civic leaders, activists, involved citizens and professionals to improve various aspects of communities, typically aiming to build stronger and more resilient local communities.
Community development is also understood as a professional discipline, and is defined by the International Association for Community Development (www.iacdglobal.org), the global network of community development practitioners and scholars, as “a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that promotes participative democracy, sustainable development, rights, economic opportunity, equality and social justice, through the organisation, education and empowerment of people within their communities, whether these be of locality, identity or interest, in urban and rural settings
