Posted on June, 19, 2019 at 11:18 am
BY SAMUEL NABWIISO - Daily Monitor
A group of 13 farmers from various parts of the country are in Netherlands where they are on best agriculture practices benchmarking visits.
The group left Uganda last Sunday to the Nordic country where they will share good agricultural practices from their Dutch counterparts.
Addressing the farmers at the dfcu Bank head Offices in Kampala on Friday evening before their departure, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture Animal Industry and Fisheries Pius Wakabi Kasaija told the farmers to utilize the opportunities during their stay and use the knowledge to transform the agricultural sector in Uganda.
“We expect you to come back when you have learnt some best practices. The challenges affecting the transformation of the agricultural sector in Uganda is the failure by farmers to adopt best practices this has kept many in poverty despite the fact that government has put in place conducive environment for that farmers to adopt best practices,” he said.
He noted that government is committed to supporting farmers through various interventions in place but advised them to work in groups for easy resource mobilisation.
The CEO dfcu bank Mathias Katamba said the bank is also committed to ensuring that the Agriculture sector in Uganda develops because it is the back bone of the country’s economy.
He said the bank has initiated many programmes that are intended to support small scale farmers to progress into commercial farmers.
“Dfcu Bank is offering cheap loans to farmers through the Agricultural Credit Facility being supervised by Bank of Uganda. We shall continue supporting our farmers until the sector develops. The stronger the agriculture sector is the more our economy will be vibrant which is good to the banking industry,” he said.
Betty Mbaziira, the group leader applauded dfcu bank and the Netherlands government for their efforts towards supporting Ugandan local farmers. She noted that their exposure to the modern farming in the Netherlands will open their minds towards adopting best agricultural practices.
Dfcu Bank for the last over four years in partnership with the Netherlands Embassy and KLM Airline in Uganda have been sponsoring best farmers in Uganda to travel to the Netherlands where they Interact with their counterparts the Dutch farmers to learn best Agricultural practices both in the Crop Animal and Fisheries sub sectors respectively.
Source: Daily Monitor