operation wealth creation

Operation Wealth Creation Agenda

1. Input distribution

Food security

The food security intervention, NAADS procures and OWC distributes improved planting materials to farmers in the District Local Governments for the major food staple crops for the respective regions of the country, particularly those of quick maturing nature, notably maize and beans. 

These interventions are aimed at increasing the production and productivity of the various priority crop commodities for improved household food s OWC was launched by H.E YK Museveni as an Intervention to Efficiently Facilitate National Socio-Economic Transformation, with a Focus on raising Household Incomes and Wealth Creation by Transforming Subsistence Farmers into Commercial Farmers to End Poverty security.

To improve household food security, NAADS and OWC supports the production of maize, beans, cassava, banana and Irish potato as well as cowpeas, sorghum and groundnuts through the distribution of seeds and seedlings to farmers.

Beans Production

Beans are widely grown for consumption in Uganda, with little use of costly inputs and on a subsistence level. Beans are a cheaper source of protein, making it highly important in the dietary regimes of the poor. As a legume, it also contributes to improving and sustaining soil fertility through atmospheric nitrogen fixation.

Since 2014, over 8 million kgs of bean seed have been provided to smallholder farmers in all district local governments that prioritize beans. Like maize, whereas beans are predominantly a staple food crop, they are also an important cash crop contributing to household incomes & national export earnings.

Common bean, scientifically known as Phaseolus vulgaris L. is an important legume staple crop in Uganda. National annual consumption of beans is estimated at about 58 kg per capita. In 2016, the area planted under beans was 683,120 Ha with a total production of 1,104,770MT.Volume of beans exported increased from 157,152 MT (2015) to 200,000MT (2017). 

Beans production system is predominantly small-scale accounting between 60–90% (on less than 2 acres) with average production of 0.25 tons (250kg) per acre despite potential yield of 700 to1500kg/ acre depending on the variety. The system is characterized by low input use especially seed and pesticides with most of the producers using seed from previous harvest.

Beans are important source of protein and micronutrients mostly B vitamins, iron, calcium and zinc.

The crop offers a good source of balance nutrition for rural households especially the poor who can barely afford animal protein.

Beans can be consumed as immature pods, mature fresh grain or dry beans and its leaves are used to complement carbohydrate diets. In addition, dry beans are important source of income especially for women and youth.

Besides, beans is able to fix nitrogen into the soil through its root nodules. This enhances soil fertility and further reduces the amount of nitrogen fertilizer used in bean cultivation and other crops majorly intercropped with beans.

When intercropped, it plays many other functions including reducing pests and disease prevalence, weed control as well as controlling soil erosion.

It is therefore an important food and nutrition security crop that can be used to enhance the economy of Uganda as well as a means of practicing sustainable climate smart agriculture.

Ecological Requirements

Beans thrives best in a warm climate of optimum growing temperature range of 20 to 280C with a minimum of 150C and a maximum of 320

Temperatures above 320C and below 150C will cause poor pod set resulting in yield loss.

Bean production is more successful in areas where rainfall is moderate to light during the latter part of growing season.

Beans are adapted to a wide range of soils as long as the soils are reasonably fertile, well drained and free of conditions such as saline.

An optimum soil pH of 5.8 to 6.5 is ideal for beans production.

Challenges and opportunities

The bean sector experiences a number of problems at different nodes of the value chain namely; input, production, trading, processing and consumption levels.

Major challenges include poor agronomic practices, declining soil infertility, lack of seed from improved cultivars, poor selection of bean seeds (seed mixtures), moisture stress, weed competition, pests and diseases, high post-harvest losses; unstable prices; limited post-harvest handling technologies, and lack of storage capacity.

On the other hand, a number of opportunities exist in the beans industry including; increasing demand of beans at domestic, regional, and international levels; established research institution/ infrastructure to promote bean production in Uganda; availability of a wide range improved bean varieties that are suitable to the different agro-ecologies, and the possibility of value addition and Wealth creation

The rains are still here. It is time to invest in the soil. As the rains intensify, thousands of people are sinking millions of shillings into farming.

Before you pour good money down the drain, here are some tips

The farming practices are rapidly changing from peasant farming to commercial farming. Commercial farming is not easy. It means treating farming is rewarding if done properly.

Twaha Kakooza, a commercial farmer in Kayunga district, says many people who intend to go into farming normally think of buying the land they will farm on before entering into the farming business. This is not an absolute necessity.

He says even without land, one can still become a successful commercial farmer. When setting up a shop, the intending trader does not buy or build the house he will work in.

Likewise an intending commercial farmer can explore the option of renting land. There is a lot of land lying idle in the countryside waiting to be hired.

“A serious farmer will need machinery, equipment and some farm buildings. However, you may build capacity as you go along,” Kakooza advises.

There are some key activities in the commercial farming cycle that if carried out properly will turn your farming business into a success story.

Timing of activities

Isaac Malinga, a commercial farmer in Kapchorwa and former Uganda’s Best Farmer winner, says a delay of a few days in the implementation of an activity can spell disaster for any profits. Each activity has a critical stage when it must be carried out.

“Write out a strategic plan detailing the farming business from start to finish. You must know from the start what you are actually doing. After you have got a clear vision of what you intend to do, write it down on paper,” he says.

Then get down to actually plan it. The planning stage will determining your success. It must be detailed enough to include even the obvious activity.

What appears obvious now, may be easy to forget a few weeks later. When are you going to plant? How long the planting activity will takes? After how many days will the wedding start? When are you going to apply fertilizer, spray against pests or apply herbicides?

“When will the plants start flowering? When is it time to start harvesting? These are all very important activities in the cropping system. Write all these activities down”, Kakooza explains.

Mike Senoga, an economist and businessman, says it important to indicate the costs of each activity and write it down. Remember this is a strategic plan that should answer all the likely questions that may arise.

Senoga says very often, farmers get stuck halfway through the farming cycle. Usually, it is because of lack of a working plan. It will surprise many observers to learn that the majority of farmers claiming to be doing it for a profit have no working plan in place.

They just plunge into the business hoping for things to sort themselves out along the way. They gamble. After the business has made a hefty loss, the players start cursing farming saying it is hopeless.

After the detailed planning is done, Senoga says go through it again and again. Remember to make an affordable plan especially if you are just starting.

Consult an agricultural extension worker for advice. Discuss the finer details with anybody who will be assisting you in the execution of the plan.

Involve your spouse who may give helpful tips. So far the only money we have spent is to buy a pen and exercise book. By the time the strategic planning has been finalised, hundreds of thousands of shillings may have been saved.

Fish Farming

Uganda produces up to 15 000 tons of fish from aquaculture, including production from small-scale fish farmers, emerging commercial fish farmers and stocked community water reservoirs and minor lakes. There are an estimated 20,000 ponds throughout the country with an average surface area of 500 m² per fish pond.

In Uganda, the aquaculture enterprise is still in its take off stages despite it being practiced even in pre-colonial times. This has been mainly due to the fish from natural water bodies like lakes, streams and rivers being sufficient for the fish eating populations.

However, due to the recent increase in population and high upshot of fish processing plants for export, the natural stocks have dwindled to alarming levels in that, meeting the domestic demand alone is going to be a problem without providing alternative sources of fish.

Aquaculture therefore presents the major alternative to natural water bodies in as far as fish production is concerned. Uganda is widely covered by free flowing water that can be utilized for aquaculture production and even the large water bodies like lakes and rivers can be utilized for fish cage establishments.

Fish technologies provided by NAADS

Under NAADS, a number of districts have come up with requests to be supported in terms of provision of inputs for support under the aquaculture enterprise. The support is in form of fish fingerings and start-up fish feeds.

However, being at take-off and since a living organism is to be reared in a controlled environment, a number of factors have to be fulfilled by an intending fish farmer. These factors can be categorized as those needed for the successful growth of a fish and institutional requirements for the success of the program.

Selection Criteria and Technical Requirements

In order for the fish farming projects to succeed, it is important to undertake proper selection of farmers/ beneficiaries. There are 3 major requirements for the beneficiary pond suitability for fish farming as described below:

Water availability:

Good sites should have good sources of water visible like streams, springs available at least throughout the year in because fish lives and does everything in water. It is the most critical factor to consider.

Nature of soil:

Soils are important in that; they hold the water that fish live in. the soils to consider are those that are a mixture of clay-loam. Pure clay cracks during hot weather and is very minimal in nutrients hence it should not be considered. Sandy soil is not desirable because water easily percolates through and hence a lot of water is lost. Areas with sandy soils and extremely clay soils should be therefore avoided.

Size and shape of the pond:

For commercialization of the enterprise, ponds need to be at least more than 300m2. The ponds must be rectangular for easy management, with a gentle slope for easy drainage, dykes must be well compacted and with a slope at least of 2:1. The minimum water depth should be 1M at the outlet and 0.8M at the inlet. Inlet and outlet pipes must be fitted well. The inlet and outlet pipes should be well screened.

Identification of potential beneficiaries.

The selection and verification exercise is conducted by technical teams from the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF), NAADS, OWC together with the beneficiary district local governments.

The Future of OWC

We have identified the major challenges that Uganda faces as:
a. How to convert agriculture into a high value sector, raise productivity, increase number of Ugandans engaged in commercialized agriculture, and increase house hold incomes.

b. How to expedite conversion of people from basic agriculture to industry and service sectors.
c. How to facilitate structural transformation of the economy to create more jobs for the thousands of young people that graduate from education institutions every year         .

d. How to improve export performance to boost the value of the shilling to international currencies. To address these challenges, we need to promote market demand-driven agricultural production. “Demand Creates Supply”.

This calls for stabilization of farm-gate prices, reduction of post-harvest losses, and value addition. These interventions will provide the incentive to peasants to raise productivity. Well-structured agro-processing will help achieve these goals.

On a broader scale, we need to squarely face the effects of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) on the command, control, coordination and communication (the 4Cs) of the development process in Uganda.

Effective coordination of all government agencies involved in the agricultural value chain and the development process at large is crucial to the pursuit of socio-economic transformation hence the Uganda Development Forum (UDF).