Agriculture cannot be the business of the private sector alone; its also government’s business The Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development has been trying to justify why agriculture was allocated approximately 3% of the national budget by saying that agriculture is the business of the private sector. This is only true for commercial agriculture but how many Ugandans are involved in commercial agriculture? Many Ugandans cannot afford valley dams yet they need them; many Ugandans cannot afford irrigation equipment including solar powered irrigation pumps yet they cannot stop dry seasons. Many farmers cannot afford a tractor yet they need community tractors that could be hired out to farmers. Farmers need high yielding inputs yet they can only afford them at subsidized rates. We here some Ugandans dying in different parts of the country because of famine that has been as a result of prolonged drought. So depending on only rainfall is no longer sustainable. So its government’s responsibility to provide subsidies to the subsistence farmers to enable them transition into commercial farmers. They need to first of all produce enough food for home consumption before they can engage in commercial production. The subsidies from government to subsistence farmers cannot affect commercial farmers as they are targeting two different markets. After all, subsistence farmers most of the time sell to the commercial farmers. Take for instance the small-scale sugar cane and tea growers, commonly known as out growers, they always sell to the commercial farmers. The required government interventions in agriculture requires substantial funding and the current level of funding (budgetary allocation) is too low. Surely, the government should consider reallocating funds in the 2013/2014 national budget to support at least 80% of Ugandans who are still involved in subsistence agriculture. As they say, agriculture is still a backbone of our economy: we are first an agricultural country before anything else.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 04:11:29 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015