The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Presidential candidate Nancy Linda Kalembe has promised to revitalize the agricultural sector in the country if elected president.
Kalembe who is canvassing for votes on various media platforms in Kampala says agriculture contributes a lot to the country with at least 22 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) according to 2019 statistics and most of the population (60% both formal and informal) deriving their livelihood from the sector.
According to Kalembe, much as the majority of Ugandans rely on crop production, animal husbandry, and fisheries, the government only allocates a mere 3.25 percent (1.3 trillion of 40 trillion shillings) of the budget to the sector.
Kalembe promised to increase the agriculture budget to 8% percent (3.2 trillion shillings), saying it is not possible to attain the 10 percent prescribed by the Abuja declaration.
She also promised to promote agricultural businesses, open agricultural cooperatives, demonstration centers, and banks to provide storage, skills, knowledge, and low-interest loans to farmers in her tenure as president.
Kalembe says that with more funding allocated to the agriculture sector, youth unemployment can be eased in Uganda. According to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, youth unemployment stands at 83% of the 33 million youths in Uganda. She notes that several young people in the country lack jobs and can be easily absorbed in the agriculture sector in Uganda.
But local farmers demand for the improvement of the entire agriculture value chain from seed buying, cost of inputs, good roads, better agriculture produce, markets and prices for their commodities.
Grace Mukisa, a maize farmer demands Nancy Linda Kalembe the presidential candidate to find mechanisms of stabilizing the prices of agriculture produce in Uganda.
Simon Okiror, a mixed crop farmer in Kabaga Wakiso district believes better roads should be constructed from the farms to the markets, the cost of seeds reduced and markets made easily available.
Ramathan Ggoobi, a senior lecturer at Makerere University Business School (MUBS) says agriculture must be promoted in Uganda in terms of promoting food security, job creation, and environmental protection where people have food and can be healthy to do productive work.
But Dr David Kantale Kazungu, an agriculture consultant prefers promoting agriculture while prioritizing environmental protection and enforcement of discipline in land use, wetlands, and forests for a sustainable agriculture sector.
He says that the extension services must be reinstated, facilitated and decentralized in Uganda traditional farming methods that are cost-free like fallowing land to increase productivity, terracing, and mulching should be embraced as opposed to the use of chemicals that kill the plants and animals in the environmental ecosystems.
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