Govt launches national organic agriculture policy and implementation plan

The government through the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry, and Fisheries has launched the National Organic Agriculture Policy (NOAP) and implementation plan aimed to harness Uganda’s agricultural potential by ensuring a well-regulated and coordinated sub-sector that contributes to national development.

While launching the policy at the Ministry head office in Entebbe this week, the Agriculture Minister, Mr Vicent Ssempijja, said that Uganda’s agriculture is generally described as organic by default.

“Majority of our farmers still rely on nature and chance to produce crops with the lowest inorganic fertiliser application. This policy is aimed at helping farmers address the challenges affecting the organic agriculture sub-sector,” he said.

The Minister noted that the slow growth of the organic agriculture system in Uganda is largely attributed to lack of coordinated efforts and a regulatory framework to guide and control the production system.

“Traditional practices can no longer cope with the fast emerging market demand for quality, safe food, and fiber. Today the market is looking for agricultural products that meet specific attributes including sustainability, traceability, and transparency. Therefore there’s a need to promote and support organic agriculture in Uganda,” Mr Ssempijja said.

He further noted that Uganda is one of the biggest producers of organic products in Africa. Uganda has the highest number of certified organic producers in Africa with 210,352 and is only second to India worldwide with 835000 producers of organic products.

Mr Ssempijja stated that in order for Ugandan producers to exploit the full benefits of organic farming, a number of challenges need to be addressed which includes lack of legislation on organic production standards like the East African Organic Products Standard (EAOPS), Limited local research on organic agriculture, low investment in organic agriculture production, value addition and market access among others.

Organic agriculture is one of the fastest-growing agricultural sub-sectors in the world. There are about 2.9 million organic producers worldwide. The Global Organic market exceeds Euros 80 billion with the highest demand concentrated in the USA, German, France, China, and Canada.

Prof Charles Ssekyewa, the chairman of the East African Organic African Imitative said this will help farmers to comply with most of the international standards that will be guiding international markets.

“We, therefore, take this launch very importantly and to be very useful to furthering the growth of organic agriculture such that organic agriculture farmers benefit from it. We very well know that there is $80 billion value for organic agriculture exists on the global market, and Uganda is benefiting from this at a very low scale. Now we would like to be guided by this policy to be able to tap much more from this market value of Organic Agriculture," he said.