Hoeconomics: From Farmers to Diggers!
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| Morrison Rwakakamba |
Fast-foward, one year from now when a new budget (2012/2013) is read, winners and losers could be different. Why? Because endemic fault-line in our budget architecture is largely embedded in implementation and not the smart budget speeches studded with admirable allocative efficiency.
Citizens must be keen on budget implementation, follow the budget figures line by line and shilling by shilling to ensure that the budget achieves its objectives. The farmers’ fraternity remains in dilemma for policy actors and economists continue to argue that most budget lines/ allocations be it energy, infrastructure or water have a direct and indirect link to fortunes of the agriculture sector.
Farmers have remained at the bottom of wealth pyramid. Productivity for crop farmers has plummeted to an all time low of 0.3% in real GDP growth from 6% ten years ago when NAADS started! Yet a lot of explaining continues to be done and justifications merchandised on why the status quo is skewed against farmers.
Today, I will not indulge in this debate. I will talk about the hoe. I will talk about hoeconomics and the dilemma of farmers and diggers in Uganda.
The Minister of Finance Planning and Economic Development, Hon. Maria Kiwanuka announced the removal of import duty on hand hoes from 10% to 0%. In her considered wisdom, this will reduce the burden of farmers who in this 21st century are still using hoes to plough the fields to feed 33 million Ugandans. It was a good gesture, and a symbolic one at best. Yet the questions we need to be asking ourselves are quite many: Do we have crop failures because hoes are expensive? Has productivity dwindled because farmers cannot afford hoes? Are farmers harvesting low prices because hoes are unaffordable? No! The problem is the hoe. And again the problem is not the hoe!
Look! On the 4th of February 2011, a team from Uganda National Farmers Federation and I started farmers fireplace conversations. On the Morning of 5th February, we visited Mrs. Apuli of Bishozi, Nkoma Sub county, Kamwenge district. She has two acres of land, one for bananas and another for pineapples. We had a farm walk and later before meeting the diary group, sat around the mid-morning fire to have a honest conversation on the challenges she faces as a farmer.
The problem was expensive labour. Period! She hires five casual laborers per day and each takes UGX3500 for six hours of work at the farm. In a day she spends UGX17500! Yet her far side of the banana farm was not well maintained. The five casual laborers are not enough. If she had a hand tractor, or as a pool of Nkoma Farmers Association had a tractor, she would be spending a quarter of the UGX 17500. She was frank! She said she is a digger and not a farmer! Farmers use labour saving technologies and inputs like fertilizer to maximize output and returns while diggers use hoes and other stone age implements for subsistence! However, her resilience and hope that one day, she would overcome was evident. She was radiant and smiling to the future.
Looking at Hon. Kiwanuka's budget, my thoughts went to Mrs Apuli, in Kamwenge. She sees no difference, she sees the budget as a ritual that won’t transform her enterprise. Yet if she had more information, and specific guidelines on how to access part of the UGX 60 billion loan facility, she can buy a hand tractor, or reach out to her farmer friends, pull resources and buy a tractor. Indeed her operational constraints zoom the story of most Ugandan farmers and diggers.
Honestly, the hoe will never transform agriculture in Uganda. Long gone are the days of gifted by nature and fertile soils! Our water resources are dwindling and our soils are hungry for nourishment. We lose UGX225 billion is soil degradation every year. Only 8% of our farmers use any form of fertilizer and only 6% see an extension worker in a given year!
As a country, are we ready to transform agriculture? Opportunities are massive; we can harness the ingenuity of our farmers, leverage our water resources for irrigation, tap into mobile technology to pursue digital extension services to more farmers, create a value addition fund to deepen agro-processing, value retention and create jobs in the agriculture sector. Our farmers ought to be mobilized into cooperatives to pull resources, skills and marshal market penetration capabilities. There are myriad solutions. We need to sit around a fireplace and have a honest conversation, for our niche as a country remains interwoven in the fortunes of the agriculture sector.
By Morrison Rwakakamba
Coffee Farmer
Nyeibingo, Kebisoni, Rukungiri
[email protected]