Agriculture is the domestication practice of crop and animal husbandry at household level. Globally 80% of the rural households derive their livelihoods entirely from subsistence animal and crop agriculture. Suffice to note that in Uganda agriculture is key sector that has for centuries been the biggest contributor to the economy by 70% and 90% of the households in Busoga are rural agriculture-based households.
Rural agriculture economics must be addressed with great concern because it has a direct impact on rural households which are close to the environment and play a crucial role in climate change a factor for sustainable development.
Smallholder farmers need to be higher on climate change agenda by only equipping them with the tools they need to withstand the impacts of climate change to achieve sustainable and equitable food systems that facilitates maintaining, improving soil health an essential factor to ensuring farmers stay resilient in the face of increasing pressures on land and changing climate. Healthy soils produce better harvest more even on small areas of land that make crops more resilient to extreme weather actions.
The key driving factor to increase rural household income is promotion of agribusiness literacy among the active population cluster particularly the youth (18 – 35) and adults (36 – 60) both female and male to actively improve on the rural household food and income systems. Food is the most basic of human needs. It is essential not just for health of individuals but also that of communities, which in turn affects the health of national economies.
These tens of thousands of active clusters of the population must be well equipped to carry out agribusiness in organized primary farmer cooperatives at County/Saza level and they advance to secondary Busoga Smallholder Farmers’ Cooperative Union.
This inkling is to ensure that quality services are acquired at input level (farmer training, provision of seed, aggrotech equipment (i.e. tractors, harvesting gears) as well as output level i.e. access to markets, storage, aggrotech processing gears).
Agribusiness must factor at large with household appropriate technology value addition for forward- thinking farming practices, establish bulking resource centers at community level. At the cottage/household a quality hub that ensures farm gate income is fixed above the middle man price rate. This will address farming practices that meet present society’s food and textile without compromising the ability for the current or future generations to meet their needs through; –
- Innovation and adoption of appropriate technology farming practices.
- Strengthening of link between farmers, markets, agro inputs suppliers and line agricultural regulatory institutions.
- Financing and marketing to enable diversification and produce regular market supplies.
Rural household agriculture is very instrumental in promoting young population in Busoga to foster development that will ensure food security, improved household incomes and address climate change right from the grassroots level.
With great instantaneous from supporting farmers primarily on subsistence produces, one of our core focus areas must be through organized farmer multi-purpose cooperative societies. Under cooperative strategy quality and quantity bulking will offer an organized system to promote rural household agriculture literacy sustainably thus making it easy to access valuable markets.
This article is written by Namaddu Lazarus (Environmentalist)
