Minister of Agriculture, Tress Buchanayandi. Photo by Peter Busomoke
By Pascal Kwesiga
Agriculture Minister,
Tress Bucyanayandi, has defended the proposed reforms in the national
agricultural external service system, saying they are necessary for the
sector transformation.
The minister was yesterday speaking at the 2nd roundtable
discussion attended by ministry of agriculture officials and non-state
actors working group on the proposed national agricultural extension
service reforms at Sheraton Hotel in Kampala.
According to the proposed reforms, a specialised agency will be
created to support the extension system by helping farmers to access
potential market opportunities.
The agency will also facilitate the private sector to effectively
secure the needed timely agricultural inputs and integrating NAADS in
Local Governments production structures.
The reforms will also support the development of an efficient
private sector input distribution system and separate promotion of
inputs from the extension service delivery system.
The
National Coordinator of Food Rights Alliance, Agnes Kirabo (R)
welcoming the Minister of Agriculture, Tress Buchanayandi (L)
accompanied by Commissioner of Agriculture, Beatrice Byarugaba (C)
during the opening of the 2nd Colloquium on Agriculture Extension and
Advisory Services Reform in Uganda on 3rd Apr,2014 at Sheraton Hotel.
Photo by Peter Busomoke
The proposed reforms also seek to create the departments of
extension and skills management and agricultural investment and
enterprise development in the directorate of agricultural extension and
advisory services.
“Some of these reforms seek to improve the quality of training offered in universities and agricultural colleges.
We are going to focus on practical agricultural training,” Bucyanayandi said.
The NAADs coordinators, according to the proposed reforms, will be
phased out and given an option to join main stream production
departments.
The district production coordinators will be strengthened to be
technically and administratively responsible for agricultural programs
in the districts.
If the reforms are approved, Local Governments will be empowered to
plan for the agricultural sector, offer agricultural extension
services, monitor and evaluate performance of the sector programs among
other functions.
They will also be required to collaborate with the National
Agricultural Research Organizations on matters pertaining to
agricultural research and put in place and implement appropriate
bye-laws.
Agnes Kirabo, the national coordinator of Food Rights Alliance, a
coalition of Civil Society Organizations in the field of sustainable
agriculture and food security said that the reforms should address the
declining trend in the performance of agricultural sector from 7.9% in
2000 to 0.9 % in 2010/11.
“This decline is manifested in all the three sub-sectors of agriculture: crops, livestock and fisheries,” she added.
The number of farmers accessing extension services and national
budgetary allocations to agriculture, Kirabo said, was declining. “There
in funding from 4.6% in 2001 to 3.2% in 2013 which is way below the 10%
share Uganda pledged,” Kirabo added.
But the minister said the performance of the agricultural sector
was improving saying, “If it was not improving we would not be exporting
food. We are producing 5m tonnes of coffee, 250,000 tons of rice and we
are also seeing an improvement in tea and cotton,” Bucyanayandi
explained.
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