Garlic could spur household incomes, cottage industries
Kakooza waters garlic sprouts at his farm in Kayunga. Garlic is a high value that has great potential more investment and technical support. FILE pHOTO
Agricultural scientists have noted that growing garlic could become an important source of household incomes as well as agro-cottage industrialisation, if it is given specialised technical attention.
Representatives of the ministry of Agriculture, National Agricultural Research Organisation (Naro) and private sector made the recommendation during a fact-finding mission to a garlic-seed producer, Shatwa Mixed Farm in Kayunga.
MAAIF’s seed inspector, Divine Nakedde told Dr. Twaha Kakooza, the director, garlic is a vital source of lucrative agricultural business as seed and for food and herbal-medicinal uses.
“This crop has the potential to spur extensive farm-incomes across Uganda, for its high-market value. And the five years you have conducted on-farm experiments and market-research, is good enough time to seek for technical and policy support,” Nakedde said.
The farm’s proprietor noted that garlic is a high-value and much-sought-after crop.
“But smallholder farmers should be encouraged to grow it widely to improve household incomes because, the country faces huge shortages of good quality garlic seed.”
Kakooza also revealed that smallholder farmers stand to earn from garlic growing across agro-ecological zones and from the ever-growing demand.
However, he adds, the biggest challenge remains seed, which is not easy to breed, or rapidly propagate locally.
“We have close to five years, been growing garlic on small-scale, one acre (maximum) here to bulk seed, while we also did field studies on its performance and growth on the Ugandan soils, before deciding on commercialisation. I’m also a researcher and this is the right procedure to undertake before one goes into larger-scale production,” Twaha added.
A senior Naro officer, Dr Andrew Kiggundu, revealed that their (Naro) inquiry into Shatwa Mixed Farm’s garlic activities arises from a presidential instruction to government ministries, departments and agencies.
“For me, I’m assigned to interrogate into what’s going on in high-value vegetables, spice and herbal crops/plants growing, to recommend how government can make interventions to boost such high-value crops’ production, productivity, processing and marketability,” Kiggundu explained.
