Africa-Press – Uganda. The government through the National Agricultural Advisory Services (Naads) has disbursed Shs7 billion to farmers in Acholi and Lango sub-regions to boost oilseed production this year.
Of this, Shs5 billion is for procurement of sunflower seeds while Shs2 billion will be used to procure soybean seeds.
This was revealed by Ms Prossy Mutumba, the crop development specialist at the National Agricultural Advisory Services (Naads), in an interview at the weekend.
“The procured seeds will be distributed to 63 cooperative societies and three large scale farmers located in the two sub-regions,” she said.
“Naads expects the farmers to plant about 3,500 hectares of sunflowers this season with the 70,000kgs of sunflower. The government through Naads has also done an assessment of West Acholi Cooperative Union and they will be given a sunflower processor and soybeans processor,” she added.
Last year, the government rolled out the five-year national oil seed programme in which it intends to increase the production of oilseed in the country, specifically in the north.
To achieve this, an annual budget of Shs9 billion has been earmarked to scale up production and productivity.
Ms Khadija Nakakande, the Naads spokesperson, said after spending Shs3billion on soybean and Shs6 billion on sunflower seeds in 2022, they tracked the beneficiary farmer cooperatives and discovered that the farmers realised about Shs40 billion in value.
“That was the value of the production that got to farmers once they sold the grain, and that is a significant impact that we want to widen it,” she said.
For the next five years, the intervention targets to add 63,750 metric tonnes to the current production of 80,000 metric tonnes, although this is still below the country’s consumption demand of 480,000 metric tonnes, according to Ms Nakakande.
Whereas this funding is meagre, Ms Nakakande said they continue to identify and profile medium and large-scale farmers and cooperatives to implement the intervention.
Uganda boasts 104 vegetable oil processing factories, requiring about 1,106,315,000kgs of grain at full capacity per year.
Mr Kasimiro Ogwal, the Naads Zonal Agriculture Development officer, said the government intends to see that Uganda starts producing its own oil from soybean and sunflower.
“In this programme, the government pays 70 percent and the farmer will pay 30 percent and the seeds will be given to cooperatives and large-scale farmers in the two regions, we procured 71,000kgs of Aguara-6, Hysan-33 and Pana varieties of sunflower to be distributed to cooperatives and large-scale farmers in the two regions,” Mr Ogwal said.
Meanwhile, farmers in the region want Naads to link them to the market to enable them to reap more from the intervention.
Mr George Ogwal, a member of Payuta Grain Growers Cooperative Society in Awach Sub-county, Gulu District, said: “Naads should link us to outside markets; here the middlemen come to buy from us cheaply yet they sell our goods in the nearby markets expensively without any value addition.”
Ms Doreen Amono, a sunflower farmer said more training and sensitisation of farmers will help them realise great yields and get rid of middlemen who cheat them by offering low prices for the grains.
“Last year we planted sunflowers but the yield was not good because we lacked skills and knowledge on how to space and plant them. Buyers who cheated us were the middlemen and this time Naads should prevail early enough to help us avoid the losses,” Ms Amono said.
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