Denis Mutabazi
25 February 2008
opinion
Kampala — DESPITE the agriculture sector employing 80% of the population, it receives only 5% of the annual national budget. This has resulted to problems like a decline in agricultural output, hunger and poverty, lack of access to quality technology, pests and diseases and lack of agricultural processing and marketing infrastructure.
The NRM government liberalised agricultural markets and abolished commodity-marketing institutions under the guise of eliminating monopoly and ensuring better returns to farmers.
But it has overlooked the imperfect market conditions which have not allow perfect competition to flourish.
The vacuum left by abolished commodity marketing institutions enabled few individuals close to or within government to control agricultural trade with impunity. There is no evidence that farmers' returns have improved following agricultural market liberalisation.
Disorder, chaos and frustration have marred commodity marketing over the last two decades.
Agricultural cooperatives constituted a collective voice for poor rural farmers; an avenue through which village farms linked with urban markets, and negotiated and accessed agricultural tools and inputs. Without the cushioning effect of cooperatives, rural farmers were inevitably bound to plunge into poverty.
The Government accused cooperatives of corruption. However, it grossly blundered by prescribing that they be abolished. Cooperatives could not have been incurably defective that the only plausible management decision was to abolish them!
The 2007 UNDP Human Development Report states that Uganda had become poorer by 10 points on the global Human Development Index over 2006/2007 alone, while more Ugandans had lost their agricultural livelihoods.
Thus it has become hopeless for farmers to carry on with the increasingly risky, loss-making, poverty-entrenching agriculture. As a result, they have abandoned farming even though they have no other livelihood options.
This has set the stage for sustainable peasantry. Peasants lack a voice to challenge the status quo. The Government should, therefore, address their plight.
The writer is a lobbyist for sustainable livelihoods
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