NAADS must stay, says minister Bucyanayandi... Which new programmes are you bringing to replace the National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS)? Media reports that NAADS was stopped are not true. NAADS is not being replaced. All we are doing is working out an extension system, which fits Uganda’s situation. We want to re-organise NAADS. How? We have changed the management of NAADS. The old management team was beginning to do their own things while isolating the ministry. Our emphasis now is on strengthening our extension system to deliver efficient services to the farmers. How will you do it? We shall recruit additional staff to fill gaps in the system, especially at the sub-county level. We shall also streamline the supervision of the district agricultural coordinator, who will be responsible for the overall coordination of all agricultural activities in the district. This transition will be gradual. Extension workers have not been doing their cardinal role. What cardinal role? The cardinal role of an extension worker is to impart knowledge and offer skills to farmers on how to do effective farming. NAADS has been hardly doing this. They concentrated on input distribution, which overshadowed the core role. We want NAADS to retain inputs only for purposes of demonstrations. In the next budget, the Government is planning to implement a commodity approach to boost agricultural production. What is this all about? To realise more revenue and food security, we have identified 10 agricultural products where we want to boost production without abandoning the production of other products. These 10 products include maize, rice, beans, cassava, bananas, dairy animals, beef animals, fish and the traditional cash crops of coffee and tea. What volumes are you targeting? We want to increase the production of beans by 3% from the current 2.5 million metric tonnes to 2.57 million metric tonnes in the 2013/2014 financial year. For rice, we want to increase its production from 233,000 metric tonnes to 350,000 metric tonnes. We want to increase milk production by 11% from 1.8 billion litres to 2 billion litres by the year 2015. For fish, we want to increase private hatcheries from 250,000 to 1million of fish fries. And maize from 2.3 million metric tonnes to 2.37 metric tonnes. Should we expect the introduction of tractors for farmers to promote mechanised agriculture? That is the direction we have decided to take, but there is no money in the budget for purchasing tractors. You should also be aware that the Government has no plans of re-introducing the tractor hire services because in the past, it failed. How then will mechanised agriculture be promoted? The Government will help cooperatives to acquire tractors. In 2003, African governments made the Maputo declaration, requiring them to commit not less than 10% of their national budgets to agriculture and in 2012 the NRM caucus resolved that agriculture would be given 7% of the national budget, but only 3.4% is being given to agriculture in the next budget. Why are we still far below the expectations? That question should not come to me. It should go to the Ministry of Finance. Tell us about the agriculture loan scheme? We do not have any agriculture loan scheme administered by our ministry. The one I know about is that handled by the finance ministry. It has put money in the commercial banks for farmers to get loans at a low interest rate of about 12%. But the fund is not enough. How far have you gone in constructing food storage facilities around the country? That programme is being implemented by the Ministry for Trade and Industry. What are some of the challenges you are facing? We have shortage of improved seeds/planting materials. Cabinet approved sh881.9b to produce improved seed, planting material and availability of stocking materials. However, the available funding is only sh37.35b, creating a gap of sh843b. With that, it is clear that the targets will not be achieved unless additional funding is secured. The other major challenge is the outbreak of crop and animal pests/diseases. These epidemic pests and diseases like foot and mouth disease, banana bacterial wilt and coffee leaf rust continue to negatively impact on production in the sector. What are your major achievements in the recent past? Our efforts led to the boost in the volume of production of agricultural products. Cotton exports increased from 22,046 metric tonnes in December 2011 to 22,406 metric tonnes in December 2012. Tea exports increased from 29, 96 metric tonnes to 30,013 metric tonnes with monetary value increasing from $38.48m to $40.8m. The cocoa exports increased from 6,751 metric tonnes to 8,713 metric tonnes at a price of $2200 per tone leading to $19.17m. Maize exports more than doubled from 57,539 metric tonnes to 126,125 metric tonnes with export values increasing from $17.37m to $23,658m. Beans exports increased from 20,156 to 23658 metric tonnes fetching about $35m. Coffee exports slightly declined from 2,367,756 to 2,356,464 metric tonnes in the 2011/2012 largely due to the Coffee Leaf Rust Disease. In the area of livestock, 930m litres of milk were produced by December of which 70% was marketed to give income of sh5.859b. A total of 22,930 doses of semen were purchased by farmers. A total of 6,646 breeding calves were produced at NAGRC and DB farms. About 85,000 Kuroiler chicks were sold to farmers. How will you practically boost the volume of production in the 10 commodities you have selected? Of course we cannot afford to distribute free seeds to all the over 4 million farmers’ households in the country, but we have strategically provided funds for distributing free coffee and tea seedlings. With the restructuring of NAADS, are there some workers who will lose their jobs? No one will lose a job. In any case, the NAADS workers are on contract. You cannot just terminate it. We need all the NAADS staff to continue working. Since the new NAADS model is more labour intensive, are you planning to recruit more workers? Yes, we need additional staffing. We shall implement that when we get approval from the Government. The discussions are going on. Production has increased in... Cotton exports from 22,046 metric tones to 22,406 metric tones Tea exports from 29, 96 metric tones to 30,013 metric tones The cocoa exports from 6,751 metric tones to 8,713 metric tones Maize exports from 57,539 metric tones to 126,125 metric tones Beans exports from 20,156 to 23658 metric tones Milk production; 930m litres by December of which 70% was marketed to give income of sh5.859b. Doses of semen 22930 purchased by farmers. Breeding calves produced; 6646
Posted on: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 10:55:52 +0000
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