Scientists task govt to  improve soil conditions 

Scientists have appealed to the government to increase access to facilities for soil testing to enable farmers to understand the status of their soil for a successful transition from subsistence to commercial agriculture.
Prof Julius Zake, a soil scientist, said understanding the status of the soil will help farmers rehabilitate it with appropriate nutrients to realise sustainable and increased production.

“It is absurd to start transforming into commercial agriculture without considering soil issues. It is as if we are saying, ‘let us produce and sell more’ without putting anything,” Prof Zake said.

He added: “The government should have the ability to make the farmers access these facilities because there is no way you are going to put the right measurements of nutrients when you do not understand the levels of these nutrients.”
He explained that plants mostly grow in soils hence the need to understand what the soil should have to have continuous production.

Prof Zake made the remarks in a keynote address at the launch of Biofertiliser, a locally made soil nutrient, at Kawanda in Wakiso District.
According to Prof Zake, the use of fertilisers in the country has not been fully embraced because the farmers are not sensitised to understand that whenever they harvest, nutrients are lost and once lost, you need to put them back.
He argued that in Uganda, the fertility of soil is based on the amount of organic matter but it gets used up that the more people harvest from the soil.

In 2006, African leaders sitting in Abuja with a concern on soil degradation agreed that Africans should use 50 kilogrammes of fertilizer per acre by 2015 and by then Uganda was using 1.8 to 3 kilogrammes per acre.
Prof Zake said: “Currently, Ugandans use about 3 kilogrammes of fertiliser per acre, meaning the country has not seen the use of fertilisers as important; that means our soils were extremely fertile but people should know that fertility is not permanent.”

Mr Sentamu, the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) manager for the central region, said without nutrients in the soil, crops would be affected leading to low yields and poor quality production.
He said: “All crops, reduced their productivity; therefore, let us consider so much improving soil by adding balanced nutrients but after knowing the structure of the soil and its requirements.”

Mr Alex Otut, the senior agriculture inspector in the Agriculture Ministry, said the changes in the weather and the soil mean that farmers cannot avoid the use of fertilisers but there is a need to put a limit.