Is this the new normal for farmers?

During the Covid-19 pandemic induced lockdown farmers were believed to be the least affected by such restrictions as keeping indoors since the majority of them were on their farm plots and were at liberty to get out of their houses and work in their crop fields or to graze their animals. They continued to produce their own food and did not appear to be in urgent need of government emergency food supplies.

However as farmers they wanted uninterrupted cash inflows from their farm products, yet there were fewer customers coming to purchase the milk, the bananas, the fruits, the vegetables, the potatoes, the eggs, and the other products since, due to the lockdown, most town dwellers, the main end consumers of the food items in Kampala and other towns were out of work with less money to spend.

Social distancing and restrictions on movement did not make things any better as they caused severe disruptions in food markets with cash strapped town dwellers only having to depend on boda-boda transport for delivery of their food supplies.

Border closures, restrictions, and delays discouraged cross border food trade. Talk of Kenyan pineapple and tomato traders that fuelled the massive production of the commodities in Masaka and elsewhere!

The impression has now been created that most of our Covid-19 infections have come from people crossing our borders and consequently our Kenyan friends are finding it harder to come for the tomatoes and pineapples.

Hence the current discouraging low farm gate prices for the commodities. Covid-19 has ransacked almost all export and import systems for agricultural commodities and supplies posing a real poverty threat for farmers.
Border closures and hurdles impact input supplies such as fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides, vet drugs, and some agricultural tools.

It has also impacted extension and technical services --- veterinary services, agro-dealer services and land administration arbitration as well as financial services.
Last Saturday Seeds of Gold featured a scientific farmers’ meeting in Kyotera District where only six masked farmers gathered to learn a technology instead of the whole group of thirty-six. Is this going to be the ‘new normal’ for the farmers?