Uganda Agricultural News and Research Digest – October 3rd
Uganda Food Security Outlook Update - September 2012
FEWSNet
Harvesting countrywide is almost complete in bimodal parts of the country with exceptions in eastern and northern Uganda. Household food stocks have been replenished, and crop sales have supplied markets from the new harvests. Harvesting is ongoing in the unimodal areas of the country, and near average harvests are expected. Minimal to no acute food insecurity is expected throughout Uganda from October to December.
Also see http://www.fews.net/Pages/country.aspx?gb=ug&l=en.
Scheme to ease access to irrigated farming tools
East African Business Week
Centenary Bank and Balton Uganda have unveiled the Irrigation Credit Scheme to provide irrigation equipment to small scale farmers and promote food security in Uganda. The irrigation equipment, dubbed Farmer's Kit, is a set of various farming inputs and tools growing crops both in the open field and green houses. Balton Uganda's MD Shiff Zeev said the kit consists of a farmer's green house, drip irrigation system, water tank of 500liters, farmer's sprayer, seeds, nursery set, fertilizers, agro chemicals as well as training (including health and safety) and professional agronomic support for one season of 8 months.
The workplaces building Africa's business future
BBC News
Setting up on your own in East Africa isn't cheap. Not only is there rent to consider, there's furniture, utilities and the internet connection that remains prohibitively expensive for ordinary Ugandans. So instead Mr Ssemakula, a budding entrepreneur in the provision of agricultural and livestock services, decided to become a member of the Mara Launchpad, one of a new breed of home-grown co-working spaces and innovation hubs in Kampala. Mr Ssemakula is certain coming to the Mara Launchpad was the right thing to do. "The Mara Launchpad has changed my business by providing me with a professional business environment that commands more credibility in the eyes of my customers, in this case the farmers, who find me in such a setting and they see my business as a serious business."
Italy funds FAO’S US$1.3m oilseed and rice project for Northern Uganda.
StarAfrica.com
The FAO Representative in Uganda and the Italian Ambassador to Uganda signed an agreement for a new USD 1.3 million (Uganda Shillings 3.2 billion) project – “Promotion of commercialization of agriculture among resettling populations in Gulu, Kole and Lira districts of Northern Uganda to restore livelihoods and reduce poverty”. The three year project aims at improving food security and incomes of smallholder farmers through development of rice and sunflower subsectors. It will put emphasis on profitable production, processing, value addition, marketing and capacity development.
Production issues affecting food security- EAC chief.
New Vision
The problem farmers in East Africa face is not lack of access to market, but challenges of production, the East African Community Secretary General Dr. Richard Sezibera has disclosed. “We have at the moment 130 million people in East Africa and the number is shooting up to 150 million, so you can’t say that we don’t have market. The challenge we have is that of production,” he said in an interview.
New fertilizer import terminal at Dar port to serve the region
Daily News
A $20 m storage facility is being built by Yara International at the Dar es Salaam port. “This is a boon to trade because this will not be used by Tanzania alone, but by Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi”, the Secretary General of the EAC, Dr. Sezibera said. He said Dar es Salaam is the gateway for a number of landlocked countries, most of which are fertilizer insufficient. He said Yara International presently supplies 120,000 tonnes of fertilizer annually to Tanzania and neighbouring countries, but the installation of this facility would increase the quantities to meet the growing demand.
Impact Evaluation in Practice - a new resource for conducting rigorous evaluations of programs
The World Bank
Recent published on-line and in print, Impact Evaluation in Practice presents a non-technical overview of how to design and use impact evaluation to build more effective programs to alleviate poverty and improve people’s lives. The goal is to further the ability of policymakers and practitioners to use impact evaluations to help make policy decisions based on evidence of what works the most effectively. The web-site includes presentations on each of the elements of the text, and also case study material for use in better understanding the principles of rigorous impact evaluation.
Agricultural and food policy research
Note that if you experience any trouble in downloading any of these research documents, you can contact us by return e-mail for assistance. We can offer no guarantees that we will be able to provide the document, but we may have other avenues to pursue to assist you.
A review of agriculture, food security and human nutrition issues in Uganda
G Shively and J Hao – Purdue University Department of Agricultural Economics Staff Paper, 2012
Uganda faces a wide range of development challenges, among them regional and seasonal food insecurity and varying degrees of adult and child malnutrition. This paper provides a brief review of topics and available evidence regarding agriculture, food security and malnutrition in Uganda. It is intended to document important source material and provide an overview of topics for non specialists or those moving into new areas of concern.
N Pouw, C Elbers - Journal of Development Studies, 2012
Poor smallholder farmers in Uganda live at or below subsistence level. They are vulnerable to multiple risks and insecurities and have limited access to capital markets. In this article we propose a model to estimate household priority patterns in asset acquisition using cross-section data. The model is applied to a field-survey consisting of 938 farm households from three districts. The model predicts the distribution of asset ownership, conditional on the type of assets owned. Based on the established priority patterns the article proposes a low-cost, regional poverty monitoring instrument using only asset type data.
FB Kyazze, B Owoyesigire, P Kristjanson and P Chaudhury - CCAFS Working Paper 26, 2012
Uganda, and especially the Rakai district, is highly vulnerable to climate variability and likely to be amongst the worst hit under climate change. Any responses to climate change affected communities cannot be considered complete unless women-specific responses are interwoven in a variety of adaptation options considered in the target area. The overall objective of this short-term research was to test tools and methodologies developed by CCAFS and FAO on analysis of gender issues in climate change, agriculture and food security.
