Terry Leahy and Francis Alinyo
Below is the opening paragraphs for “Leading Farmer Projects and Rural Food Security, Uganda” by Terry Leahy and Francis Alinyo.
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In 2007, Francis Alinyo became one of the students in the Masters program that runs out of Newcastle University. For his research project, he wanted to look at the projects that had been running in the Kapchorwa and Bukwo districts of Uganda. This was a somewhat remote hilly region with good soils and rainfall but intense problems of rural poverty. The following chapter is constructed with the data he collected for that project but also depends on his years of working with the local council and the agriculture departments and living in this region. In 2009 I was able to visit Francis in Kapchorwa on a flying visit and on the trip out there I was able to get some understanding of the local agriculture. In 2010, I stayed in Kampala and worked with staff from Makerere university, discussing village projects and conducting research on the Kulika project that I will describe in chapter eight. At the end of my trip that year I had intended to stay with Francis in the villages but after three months of field work in Africa I had to return to Australia and that never happened. Nevertheless, this research stands on its own merits. The following discussion was a joint effort.
What this research reveals in particular are some of the problems with the commercial production of maize that is quite widespread in poorer parts of Uganda. In other words, if efforts to commercialize production work (as they often do not) what happens to village poverty? Another issue relevant to many African countries is the strategy of “leading farmer projects” which I have discussed in chapter four. The problems with leading farmer projects that Francis discovered in this region are undoubtedly replicated in other places. In chapter two I explain how they fail to make a dent on rural poverty and hunger in Zambia. Their failure in this regard is equally apparent in many African countries. Finally, this chapter considers the way in which the gendered division of authority and labour in rural Africa can have an impact on household food security and suggests what might be done in this context.
The economy of Uganda is dominated by the agriculture sector, accounting for 80 per cent of employment (Ministry of Finance 2008) and 22 per cent of GDP (Danida 2005: 16). Production is predominantly for national consumption and 66 per cent of agricultural GDP comes from food crops (Danida 2005: 23). Government action on agriculture has been constructed around the “Plan for Modernisation of Agriculture” put in place in 2001 (MAAIF 2000), and revised in 2010 with the “Development Strategy and Investment Plan for 2010 to 2015” (MAAIF 2009). The key strategy of both plans has been to deal with rural poverty by increasing the commercialisation of agriculture, moving farmers out of subsistence production. Whether as a result of this policy or otherwise, there has certainly been a trend towards commercialisation. Between 1989 and 2004, the value of non-monetary (subsistence) agriculture fell from 55 per cent of the total economic value of agriculture, to 42 per cent (Danida 2005: 23).
Nevertheless, over 80 per cent of rural families still rely on subsistence agriculture to some extent (Culbertson and Kalyebara 2008). Along with this partial commercialisation of agriculture, there has also been some expansion of agricultural production. Commercial agriculture expanded by five to six per cent per year between 1989 and 2004, with subsistence agriculture also expanding by two to three per cent per year (MAAIF 2000).
Despite the implementation of the modernisation plan and the growth in commercial agriculture associated with it, rural poverty is still a very real problem. While poverty declined up until 2003, it increased thereafter. For crop farmers, the percentage in poverty rose from 39 percent for 1999/2000 to 50 percent in 2002/3. This increase in poverty for crop farmers occurred despite the fact that food crops have become a more important part of the commercial agriculture sector in this period, and despite the increasing export of maize from Uganda (Danida 2005: 16, 21). In other words, increasing commercialisation of crop agriculture has clearly failed to pull crop farmers out of poverty. The impact of rural poverty on food security and health is marked. Twelve per cent of Ugandan children die before their first birthday, and four out of ten of those who survive are stunted, with vitamin A deficiency, and anaemia being common (Bachou 2002: 356-7; Cabañero-Verzosa 2005:1).
In this chapter, we aim to examine the ways in which the policy settings developed by the Ugandan government have failed to come to grips with the real drivers of food insecurity in the rural economy and go on to suggest some alternative approaches which could be more effective. Before doing this it may be useful to explore the “Plan for Modernisation” and its more recent incarnations in more detail.
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