Foreign markets shun grains worth billions

Elizabeth Pariyo is one of the hundreds of women trading in simsim and groundnuts in this market in the Kampala suburb. Business, Pariyo says, is doing fine and she earns a profit good enough to enable her pay rent, school fees for her two children and meet other basics needs.
“I sell a kilo of odii (simsim and groundnuts paste) at Shs10,000 and plain groundnuts paste at Shs7,000,” Pariyo told Prosper Magazine last week.
“The market is there locally, but we also get market from South Sudan and Kenya,” she adds.
Next to her business, however, another lady is processing broken ground nuts into a paste. Both women use rudimental machines to process the grains into paste.

Hygiene is a concern here. The processing room is untidy, with brownish paste of past weeks left to engrain on the processing machines. The processing room is open and the dust from the unpaved neighbourhood mingles with the processed and unprocessed nuts and simsim with ease.

Poor handling methods
Poor handling of agricultural produce is not limited to Nakawa traders alone but is a countrywide problem as a Makerere University research titled: ‘Mycotoxins: Their Associated Health and Economic Effects,’ has found out.

According to the said research, at least 60 per cent of the maize, groundnuts, soya beans and sorghum sold on the market have got high levels of aflatoxins (poisons) that damage the body systems leading to cancer.

Aflatoxins contamination, Prof Archileo Kaaya, the lead researcher and food and nutrition senior lecturer at Makerere University, says mainly happens due to poor pre- and post-harvest practices such as harvesting immature crops, inadequate drying, poor storage facilities and processing grains which are already damaged.
“There is need for urgent quality management systems among farmers, traders and other food handlers to minimise this contamination if we are to address this contamination,” Prof Kaaya said.

The Makerere Department of Food and Technology, research was conducted on grains between 2,000 and 2018.
Trade minister Amelia Kyambadde said food contamination has frustrated the ministry’s efforts to export more agricultural produce, where Uganda has a comparative advantage as millions of tonnes of produce are being rejected outside the country.
“We have had several issues with the European Union. Ugandans [traders] will say discrimination. But the truth is, we have issues [quality],” minister Kyambadde said.
“Contamination of our agricultural produce is a non-tariff barrier. There have been several interceptions and rejections of our goods,” Kyambadde said without providing statistics.
But the Agriculture ministry separately said Kenya had early in the year rejected 600,000 metric tonnes of maize from Uganda over fears of aflatoxins.

Loss
It is estimated that the economic impact of aflatoxins in Uganda, according to the Makerere University research could be in excess of $78m (about Shs293 billion) over failure to export maize alone.

Cereals such as maize, millet, sorghum, ground nuts, rice, potatoes and cassava chips, which research has found to be contaminated with poisonous moulds, are some of the country’s staple foods.

In a recent interview, Mr Roberto Ridolfi, the head of the European Union (EU) in Uganda, said at the launch of the ministry of Trade website that Uganda’s exports, especially food stuffs have failed to make it to the EU market due to poor standards.
“I call for increased focus on issues of sanitary compliance, which we consider as key in enhancing competitiveness of Uganda’s product into the EU,” Amb Ridolfi said in speech read for him.

Mr Moses Tuma, the Kisenyi Millers Association chairman, said government is being reluctant in addressing something “that touches lives and incomes of the biggest population.”
“The quality of the maize we buy starts from the gardens,” Mr Tuma said.
“Some farmers, because of demand, harvest immature maize. They do not dry it properly and when they try to dry, they do it on bare grounds,” he adds.

Mr Tuma proposes that government arrests farmers who harvest immature farm produce and shut down factories that process such contaminated produce.
“They did it with coffee and now the quality of coffee has improved. Government needs to do this using the extension workers and officials of National Agricultural Advisory Services,” he urged.
Dr Joyce Moriku Kaducu, the State minister for Primary Health Care, said they are rolling out a new campaign that will sensitise Ugandans on proper food handling.
“The dangers associated with aflatoxins negatively affect our development. Look at the cost of treating cancer,” Dr Moriku said at the national conference on control of aflatoxins campaign launch in Kampala.
“Aflatoxins impair the digestive system causing poor digestion and adoption of nutrients by the body. It affects the nervous system leading to abnormal behaviour and depression. It causes stunting and malnutrition and affects fertility,” Dr Kaducu added.

Other effects of aflatoxins, the minister said, include causing stunting in children, lower child birth weight, damages the brain, affects the gene expression leading to birth defects and causes liver cancer.
Since Uganda aims at exporting to European markets where standards are high, there is no way that will be achieved unless the country addresses the quality, she said.

Interventions
Amount. Agriculture ministry last week said no grains should be dried on bare grounds and warned against pre-mature or late harvesting of grains. Farmers have also been advised to keep grains in dry places and airtight containers.

Other guidelines include farmers and traders only using clean containers to keep or transport grains.
Consumers should eat a balanced diet and more vegetables to detoxify the body.
“Since the grains such as maize are also used to make animal and fish feeds, all these get infected. Animals that eat feeds contaminated with aflatoxins produce low quality meat and milk,” Agriculture minister Vincent Ssempijja said.