Denis Okello is earning big from coffee farming
Leaders from the Acholi and Lango Sub-regions have called on the government to initiate a special affirmative action program to prioritize promoting high-value perennial crops for farmers in Northern Uganda.
According to the leaders, the region has stagnated economically for the past years due to the over-dependence by farmers on traditional crops that don’t give high monetary returns after harvests and sales.
Linda Auma, the Lira District Woman Legislator and Chairperson Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture says the only way Northern Uganda can economically grow is for the government to open opportunities for high-value crops.
Speaking at the opening of the three-day local government regional budget consultative meeting in Gulu City on Monday, Auma says the government must prioritize the promotion of high-value crops like coffee and Hass avocado citing the land favors their growth.
She says the region has proved it is suitable for growing high-value crops despite biased zoning by the colonial masters that left farmers in the region to only concentrate on growing cotton, and tobacco among other crops.
“Now, as a government and as a leader from northern Uganda, I would like affirmative action. Not to just favor northern Uganda but to allow northern Uganda to catch up with the rest of the country. The goodwill is there, the preaching has been done but when those provisions were there, our people had not yet understood,” she said.
According to Auma, the government should also focus on boosting the extension services to the farmers in Northern Uganda so that they are guided on growing the high-value crops that they are advocating for.
“Extension service is very important to teach our people what to grow. I applaud the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) because, in areas where UCDA have touched, their coffee has excelled,” said Auma.
Dr Kenneth Omona, the state minister for Northern Uganda Rehabilitation says it is high time for the government to engage in the promotion of livestock and perennial crops such as coffee. He says while the traditional crops known to be grown in the region have supported homesteads, their values can’t match high-value crops.
Omona says the Agriculture Ministry has already confirmed that high-value cash crops like coffee, avocado and cocoa grow well in the region adding that there is now a need to expand on the extension services to the farmers.
On this note, Omona says an estimated 43 million coffee seedlings have been distributed in Northern Uganda by the government but due to the limited extension services and guidance, the majority of the seedlings dried up.
Bridget Nimungo, an economist in the Economic Development Policy and Research Department at the Ministry of Finance however says land utilization in the region remains at its lowest which hurts production.
According to the Statistics from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), shows while access to land stands at, its utilization is still at its lowest at only 30 percent.
According to Nimungu, the underutilization of land stems from the subsistence nature of agriculture in the region where land is mostly communally owned.
She notes that optimal land use and production in the region can be boosted through a shift from rain-fed agriculture to irrigation and the use of fertilizers for commercial farming.
Coffee growing in the Acholi Sub-region was introduced by the government in 1999 as an alternative to the region’s dominant cash crop cotton. While many farmers in the region are embracing the crop, according to a report in July 2023, production has stagnated at only 500,000 bags since 2020.
Recently, at the first regional Parliamentary sitting in Gulu City, President Yoweri Museveni emphasized the need for farmers in Northern Uganda to embrace his four-acre model approach as a means of lifting the socio-economic status of farmers.
Through the four-model approach, the President encourages farmers especially in areas with fragmented lands to use an acre each to grow coffee, and fruits, raise livestock, and birds, and rear fish.
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