Govt introduces digital stamps for agro-inputs

The Government through the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry, and Fisheries (MAAIF) has finalised plans to introduce digital stamps for all agro-inputs entering the country as one of the ways to fight counterfeits.

“One of the solutions we have come up with is to use a digital tracking solution to ensure that quality reaches the farmers. Just like you have seen digital stamps on mineral water, soft drinks, and other beverages, this is what we intend to do with the agricultural chemicals," said the commissioner department of crop inspection and certification, Mr Paul Mwambu, during the opening of the five-day training for agro-input dealers on the safe use and handling of agricultural chemicals, at Uganda National Farmers Federation offices in Kampala on Monday.

The commissioner said that these digital stamps will be useful because the product will be passed through a scanner to find out if it fulfills the requirements. This will be a good intervention against counterfeits.

“As a ministry, we have a core responsibility of regulating the agro-input sub-sector. Our mission as a ministry is to transform subsistence farming into commercial agriculture and this can only be possible if farmers embrace the use of agro-inputs,” he said.

“I am informed that some unscrupulous people are involved in several forms of counterfeiting including mislabeling of agro-inputs whereby the label does not reflect contents in the container; label reuse where a label of a premium product is placed on a container of a sub-standard or adulterated product; container reuse where premium containers are refilled with diluted or fake products; label imitation, whereby to an end,” Mr Mwambu added.

He added that: “Fake products affect the health of our people but the government also loses huge sums of money in taxes on fake products. We shall always welcome efforts to weed out fake and counterfeit agro-inputs from our market. Therefore I am warning agro-input dealers in Container village where many of you are operating have always been mentioned as being at the center of this vice. I want to sound a serious warning to all those involved or are about to be tempted to start that please stop henceforth.”

The government has already procured a company to help do this job on its behalf.

“The whole process is worth Shs1 billion. We expect it to start in November next financial year within this calendar year.”

According to Mr Loganathan Umashankar, the Managing Director Osho Chemical Industries Ltd which is leading the training said: “Knowledge is more important in any industry, without knowledge we can’t grow and industries can’t grow. Therefore, agro-input dealers should have the knowledge to transform farmers so that they can believe in them. That is the purpose of this training. Therefore, I advise dealers to join the Uganda National Agro-input Dealers Association (UNADA) so that they can acquire more knowledge about pesticide handling among other things.”

He noted that this kind of training will go to other parts of the country like Mbale, Masaka among other areas.

Ms Joweriah Nasimbwa an agro-input dealer in container village, Kampala said: “I have been selling agro-inputs for 30 years from and it's true there are counterfeits in the market. I believe digital stamping of agro-inputs will help sort them out.”