Grow beans, cassava or you will starve,  minister tells farmers

The government has urged farmers in northern region to continue growing beans and cassava in large quantities if they are to escape chronic hunger. The farmers abandoned the crops since the emergence of better-paying ones such as soybeans.

Ms Grace Freedom Kwiyucwiny, the State Minister for Northern Uganda, warned that if farmers do not change their mindset, they will continue facing hunger.

“I don’t know whether it is scientific but as you were mentioning what you grow, I have seen cassava, soybeans, sunflower, simsim, maize but I don’t know why you don’t grow beans,” she said during the commissioning of a storage facility in Olilim Trading Centre, Olilim Sub-county in Otuke District last Friday.

The government established the Shs100m storage facility under the Development Initiative for Northern Uganda with funding from the European Union. It belongs to Olilim Acan Kwete Farmers’ Cooperative Society Ltd. A handful of farmers indicated that they grow beans on half an acre of land, mainly for home consumption. However, Ms Kwiyucwiny urged the farmers to grow the crops alongside others.

“Where I come from (West Nile), the household must have beans, cassava, then you can add on the rest. But if you don’t have them, you are really a very poor household,” the minister said.

“Grow them in excess so that you can also sell,” she added.

Ms Kwiyucwiny urged members of the Olilim Acan Kwete Farmers’ Cooperative Society to engage in large scale production.

“We have our fertile land, we are able bodied but we are not producing enough,” she said, warning people against selling their food crops and leaving nothing for home consumption.

Ms  Kwiyucwiny said emergency food aid is unsustainable.

“What is sustainable is your own production. We are still doing subsistence farming. We even sell without determining how much should remain for my family,” she said.

Ms Kwiyucwiny also said the government had started registering people with more than 50 acres so that they can engage in commercial farming.

Mr MacDonald Akwar, the chairperson of the cooperative, said their aim is to organise farmers into groups to increase their productivity and income.

The cooperative society started in 2017 with 30 members but has grown to 628 members.

“Our aspiration is to enrol up to 1,000 members. We have 31 farmer groups. Our activities mainly are growing sunflower, rice, soybeans, simsim, cassava and other food crops,” he said.

However, Mr Jimmy Owiny Eron, the agricultural officer for Alango Sub-county, told this newspaper that the major challenge hindering production in Otuke is climate change.

“Last year, during the second planting season, there was a lot of drought and most of the crops that farmers planted dried up,” he said.

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