Small scale farmers better-off by themselves

Now poverty is a serious problem in Uganda, no wonder the people in government thought of the idea of prosperity for all. According to a recent poverty study, one out of every three households in Uganda is absolutely poor.

Kampala

It is an open secret that, 4 years after the 2006 election, the idea of prosperity for all Ugandans has had anything but questionable impact on the wellbeing of poor Ugandans. Now poverty is a serious problem in Uganda, no wonder the people in government thought of the idea of prosperity for all. According to a recent poverty study, one out of every three households in Uganda is absolutely poor meaning they live on less than Shs 60,000 per month.

The politicians have been telling us for several months now, that one practical approach the government has taken to make prosperity for all a reality is to choose a model farmer from each village and fund their enterprise to the tune of Shs 6 million and then use the success of this farmer to spur the rest of the village to climb out of poverty.

When I visited my village a year ago, I found that the area still did not have a model farmer who had benefited from the prosperity for all money. That is the time I held a discussion with an aunt who is a very hardworking peasant farmer but gets very little harvest from her efforts. From the discussion I concluded that one of the problems my aunt faced was the lack of high quality seeds.

I helped my aunt to get improved maize seeds for her two acre garden. When I went back to the village 10 weeks later the maize had begun to produce cobs and my aunt was ecstatic. The crop had germinated close to 100 percent and was producing 2 or 3 huge cobs on each plant. It was nothing she had seen before in her farming experience. I made a quick mental calculation and guessed that my aunt would earn at least Shs 2 million from her garden which would enable her to more than double the acreage for the next season.

After two more weeks, I paid another visit to the village and my aunt’s smile had turned into a scowl. It transpired that when the villagers saw the maize each of them made a goal of breaking off a few cobs to roast or boil before the crop dried. Considering that the garden is a few kilometres from a former IDP camp, the loss that my aunt got was significant. Instead of the 40 bags we had predicted the harvest was only 4 bags. This was far worse than the harvest my aunt used to get with the unimproved seed.

If my aunt had paid for the seed and fertiliser used then the money spent on them would not have been recovered from her crop. My aunt had become a target for the rest of the village instead of model farmer to be emulated. After this experience I realised that at times it is better to leave villagers to carry on with their subsistence ways instead of killing them with kindness in the name of poverty eradication.

James Abola is a business and money coach.
Email: james.abola@akamaiglobal.co.uk