Food Security Threatened By Lack Of Irrigation Funds

Posted by: Kyeyune Andrew Jonathan in Uganda news October 8, 2022

A good food security plan by the government is apparently on the brink of collapse due to lack of funds for irrigation. With billions of shillings already invested, the project is very likely aboard a sinking ship.

Even worse, it is very unlikely that the government will achieve its plan to boost agricultural production across the country. This had been aimed at guaranteeing food and animal feed security.

Immediately after both the President and his cabinet gave it a go ahead, the plan kicked off. It involves giving grants to government institutions with large tracts of land such as the prisons to produce select commodities.

In the meantime, private large-scale farmers would receive interest-free loans.

The lack of irrigation poses a threat to the plan since drought ravaged most areas where it is being implemented.

In a letter from the President, he cleared a proposal from Agriculture minister Frank Tumwebaze. The proposal is about the “strategic intervention to boost large-scale food production.”

It involves gathering support from existing government agencies in the food production business as well as big farmers to increase capacities to produce in large quantities.

Some of the participating institutions with acres to be planted include the following; Uganda Prisons (50,000 acres), UPDF (10,000 acres), and the National Enterprise Corporation (5,280 acres).

More to those are veterans (4,707 acres), National Agricultural Research Organisation (10,000 acres), National Animal Genetic Resources Centre and Data Bank (30,000 acres), and large scale farmers (314,000 acres).

The worst region in food insecurity happened to be Karamoja standing at 41% by July as per the cabinet statistics.

Over 900 people reportedly died in a recent stretch of drought in the north-eastern pastoralist sub-region. The hunger is attributed to massive crop failures as a result of a long dry spell.

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