Why Uganda’s cotton production is declining
On July 19 2018 an online publication, Genetic Literacy Project, carried an article with the screaming headline: Uganda’s textile industry declines while its neighbors embrace GMO cotton. The article authored by Isaac Ongu reported that Uganda’s lint production in the 1970s exceeded 450,000 bales but in recent years the highest amount produced was barely 250,000 annually, occasionally dropping to 100,000 bales (a bale is 185 kilogrammes).
The article further revealed that our ginneries are operating at merely 10 per cent of their optimal capacity. It went ahead to disclose that Uganda is now Africa’s top importer of used clothing, though decades ago it was able to clothe itself. The government annually imports 124 metric tons of absorbent cotton to stock National Medical Stores and Joint Medical Stores.
Relying on data from the Economic Policy Research Center (EPRC) the article attributed most of the decline to the high cost of producing cotton amid competing options, and the delay by our policy makers to enact a comprehensive bio-safety law that would give cotton farmers a technology with great potential to improve their livelihoods.
Cotton farmers face constraints like high cost of imported fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.
Most farmers in traditional cotton growing districts like Serere have shifted to alternative crops like groundnuts and sorghum which are cheaper to produce. According to EPRC, 40 per cent of the revenue earned from cotton goes to production costs compared to 11-24 per cent for crops such as cassava, groundnuts, rice, sesame and sugarcane. Dr Martin Orawu, Cotton Program Leader at Serere Research Station has also blamed Ugandan policy makers for the delay to make a bio-safety law to enable farmers grow GMO cotton.
“Due to lack of correct information some people think that if we grow GMO cotton it will destroy other crops and the environment,” Dr Orawu said. “However our research findings have proved that GMO cotton is cheaper to grow, it has higher yields, and it does not affect other crops or the environment in any way. Political leaders should understand that other countries like South Africa, Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya among many others on the globe have turned to GMO cotton.”
