Why more support is needed for small scale farmers

There is every reason why programmes such as the Parish Development Model should be supported. Such programmes are aimed at empowering the millions of struggling food producers in our rural areas.  We have teachers, health workers, carpenters, mechanics, builders and traders living in rural areas but the majority of the people living there are smallholder farmers. A recent report from the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) dated April 25, 2023 emphasized this point by calling for urgent investment in rural areas to safeguard global food security. 

According to Alvaro Lario, IFAD President, one third of the world’s food is produced by small-scale farmers living in rural areas. He is quoted in the report as saying, “About three billion people live in the rural areas of developing countries and rely to a significant extent on small-scale farming for their food and livelihoods. Rural economies and specifically agriculture have suffered from chronic under-investment in recent decades. Continuing to neglect rural people will increase poverty, hunger, migration, and make conflict and instability more likely. Food and income security are essential for national security.” The challenge is that most of our farmers work on small plots which continue to become smaller as they get sub-divided whenever the owners die. 

Our traditional inheritance practices dictate that when the head of the household dies the farm is divided up and shared by the children.  Our farmers must therefore be taught how to carry out productive and gainful farming on small plots. This might require new innovations and technologies passed on to farmers and easier access to credit services by the farmers. We are already challenged by Climate Change and have issues such as extreme weather conditions which have come along with new pests and crop diseases that so far have no known cure. 

We are also faced with food insecurity and under-nutrition. In 2016 the government came up with the National Agricultural Extension Policy which was expected to introduce innovations aimed at ending hunger; achieving food, nutrition, and income security, and promoting sustainable agriculture. It will be difficult however to make such achievements without adoption of science and technology in farming. 
Our policy makers will need to go by agricultural research findings and to pay more attention to their recommendations.  The farmers should go for improved planting materials, apply fertilisers, and carry out irrigation.

Mr Michael Ssali is a veteran journalist, 
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