President Museveni has said that Uganda is moving in the right direction as far as transforming agriculture from subsistence to commercial farming is concerned.
Museveni made the remarks as he officiated at the handover of value addition equipment and grants to beneficiary farmer organizations at Namalere Agricultural Referral Mechanization Centre in Wakiso.
Museveni said the project is aimed at reminding farmers that agriculture is a business, they should earn from it and it is just the beginning; the country is going to do more for the farmers.
According to the president, these machines are made here in Uganda by companies like Musa Body limited among others.
“We started the Palm oil project in Kalangala. The people on the island have become very rich because of that project. We are building for you a leather processing plant at Kawumu and we are also going to put up an industry to make paper out of banana fibres,” said Museveni.
“This is because we are spending about $300m importing paper. I would also like to take this opportunity to warn the people of NAADs and the Ministry of Agriculture to save our people from these fake imported seeds. We have very good local seeds,” Museveni added.
For months now, Museveni revealed that he has boycotted onions because we no longer have ‘serious onions’ adding that the country is losing its original seeds with real flavour like onions, tomatoes, oranges and others just because of some outsiders.
“I remember when I went to the USA for the first time in 1987 and they gave me a pineapple, it tasted ‘strange’. I am therefore protesting our people from using imported fake seeds, we need to keep our foods with their natural flavour,” he said.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the project will support farmer Organisations to develop post-harvest and value addition infrastructure and facilities for enhanced market access.
The ministry noted that this is meant to support farmers undertake bulking, value addition and collective marketing of quality produce for better prices and thus realize better incomes.
The project also supports participating districts to make improvements on existing farm access roads.
Such improvements are focused on eliminating key choke points that impede the flow of farm inputs and produce from production centres to storage/value addition centres and markets.
Officials said through the e-voucher management system, the project provides 67%, 50% and 33%, while the farmer contributes 33%, 50% and 67% of the total cost of inputs respectively over the three cropping cycles.
Officials added that e-Voucher Management System facilitates direct interaction between the farmer and the agro-input dealers and hence reducing the cost of transaction and ensuring timely access to quality agro-inputs.
The Project Development Objective (PDO) is “To raise on-farm productivity, production and marketable volumes of Beans, Cassava, Coffee, Maize and Rice in twelve (12) geographic clusters in 57 districts.