Posted on July, 18, 2022 at 08:44 am
Food security and nutrition policy specialists have blamed the food crisis in many parts of the country on the lack of regulation of food exports, failure to streamline production and poor distribution systems.
More than 600 starvation-related deaths have already been reported by leaders in Karamoja and some parts of Lango sub-regions, as the country experiences a significant decline in yields due to heatwaves and erratic rainfall patterns.
Ms Agnes Kirabo, the executive director of Food Rights Alliance (FRA), expressed her frustration of government inaction even when warning signs were brought to its attention.
“Three months ago, there was a report by the United Nations and Office of the Prime Minister in collaboration with the Agriculture ministry, which clearly indicated that there was a food crisis in Karamoja, but [the government] didn’t take action,” she said.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report indicated that all the nine districts in the Karamoja are classified in IPC as “Acute Food Insecurity Phase 3 (Crisis).”
The report also showed that about 41 percent of the “population (518,000 people) were facing high levels of acute food insecurity (IPC AFI Phase 3 or above) between March and July 2022.”
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja told Parliament that she has asked for Shs135 billion from the Finance ministry to address the food crisis in Karamoja. She said 200 tonnes of food had been dispatched from the Prime Minister’s office to Karamoja a day before.
Ms Kirabo said there is a need to invest in food production, food distribution and food governance. She added that “the Karamoja issue…has been happening year after year” to the point of becoming an “embarrass[ment].”
Pointing to last year’s bumper harvest, she wondered: “Where did all that food go if it didn’t go to waste?”
Scattergun approach
Consequently, she advised that “a national food reserve” be brought in to “ensure that the food goes to areas where there is scarcity.”
Despite admitting to surplus production in 2021 and 2022, Maj Gen David Kasura Kyomukama, the permanent secretary (PS) of the Agriculture ministry, said the drivers of food insecurity are complex.
“In Rukungiri, a bunch of matooke is Shs6,000, people have enough matooke, but they don’t have a market for it. Potatoes are around the same price, but posho is about Shs2,400 a kilogramme and rice is Shs3,000. The problem is in distribution,” the PS said, adding that the country is also struggling with a poor market system, informal trade as well as exports of food commodities.
“A good market system gets things from where there is plenty to where there is scarcity. But in our market, we are not yet very efficient. There is a lot of food in Kabale, Kisoro and other areas. Kenya is taking everything away,” he said.
“Our maize is being taken informally to Kenya and they are getting posho from it and maize bran animal feeds. And now here in Kampala, the price of a kilogramme of maize bran is around Shs1,200, [up from Shs600] and yet people are taking maize to Kenya,” he added.
Maj Gen Kyomukama also said the attempts to control illegal food exports have been unsuccessful, partly due to porous borders and unreliable border control officials.
“They had refused people to take food to South Sudan formally, but informally people are taking food to South Sudan and Congo,” he said, adding: “This informal trade compromises the monitoring of food standards and quality, but also it prevents the regulation of what should be taken out and kept. When you have structured [formal] trade, you get statistics and know what to take out and what should remain.”
Income security
Prof Fred Kabi, a lecturer and researcher at the Department of Agricultural Production, Makerere University, said whereas emergency intervention such as food relief is necessary, the country should find a sustainable solution to the food crisis in Karamoja and other parts of the country.
“…families should be income secure so that if the crop fails, they can buy. But now all the families are crying,” he said.
Mr Antonio Querido, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) representative in Uganda, said numerous shocks kept disrupting livelihoods, especially for the vulnerable communities in Karamoja, exposing them to this crisis.
He said Karamoja calamities include desert locust infestation, animal disease outbreaks, cattle rustling, and lately high insecurity. These “have eroded the gains earlier achieved through our resilience programming.”
He added: “There is a need for strategic partnerships and combined response because the situation of food security in Karamoja is deteriorating year after year.”
His explanation, however, leaves unanswered questions as to why other parts of the country are experiencing the food crisis or shortage.
Climate change
Agriculture minister Frank Tumwebaze, in a July 12 letter to his Finance counterpart Matia Kasaija, warning that the crisis may escalate to more parts given the poor crop yields for this season, blamed the problem on little rainfall. He also blamed “pests and disease (armyworm) that affected many districts, adding that this shrunk “the yields for this season [to] about 20 to 40 percent.”
Mr Tumwebaze said they plan to address the food security gaps by giving machinery and other inputs to large-scale farmers, a reasoning Ms Kirabo said is irrelevant.
The minister also said smallholder farmers will be supported to increase production through the Parish Development Model (PDM) into which the government has injected a lot of money.
Mr Tumwebaze said they want to focus on scaling up production of food security crops such as maize, beans, soybeans, sorghum, cassava, and potatoes between August 2022 and March 2023.
However, Ms Kirabo said Karamoja and other parts of the country that are grappling with food insecurity need not machinery, but food governance.
“We are leaving everything to chance,” she said.
Prof Kabi on the other hand said there is a need to address climate change and improve the accuracy of weather predictions to minimise such shocks.
Government plan
The Agriculture ministry is focusing on increasing production by the Uganda prisons service—which currently cultivates 9,000 acres of grain—to plant an additional 20,000 for next season and will add more in the subsequent season A of 2023.
The other large-scale producers they are focusing on are players they are the National Enterprise Corporation (NEC) and National Leadership Institute (Kyankwanzi) of the army, National Agricultural Research Organisation (Naro), National Animal Genetic Resources Centre and Data Bank (NAGRC & DB) and large scale farmers in Nwoya and other parts of Northern Uganda.
“The support they will require from the government will be for buying inputs, machinery to open large chunks of land, on-farm irrigation technologies and mini-storage facilities on the farm. This is, therefore, to present this proposal to you for study,” Agriculture minister Frank Tumwebaze wrote to his Finance counterpart Matia Kasaija on July 12.
Source: The Monitor