Let IMF help improve commercial agriculture

By Samuel Baligidde

Meeting the International Monetary Fund delegation at State House Entebbe recently, President Museveni said a deliberate move is necessary to change the attitude of the people to adopt commercial agriculture and also move fast on infrastructure, particularly the development of energy, roads and railway lines.

The attainment of a proper balance between industrialization and the expansion of agriculture is a persistent challenge; the case for industrialisation versus agriculture has not been rested. Policies over-emphasising the primacy of industrialisation have been inadequate but it is not too late to refocus on commercial agriculture as a strategy for development. New strategies ought to minimise the disequalising effects between the big commercial and small peasant farmers.

Agricultural progress is essential to increasing the provision of food for a growing non-agricultural labour force, raw materials for industrial production, savings and tax revenue to support development, to earn more foreign exchange and to provide a market for domestically manufactured goods.

There is a need to revisit the African Green Revolution of the 1970s that entailed new packages of agricultural inputs which included a combination of improved grain varieties, heavy fertiliser usage and controlled irrigation schemes. The President’s envisioned strategic agricultural solutions should entail tackling the long term challenges of socio-economic and political upheavals that might upset the stability of agriculture and other aspects of rural and urban life.

The problem is that agrarian reform resulting from commercial agriculture generates contradictions that include aggravation of regional imbalances. The resulting inter-regional inequalities that cause political unrest could undermine the federation of East Africa; commercial agriculture has political implications. Besides, to achieve higher output, prices must be raised to make the necessary investments profitable to commercial farmers but maintaining high support prices keeps consumer prices up. High prices are cost of living increases that adversely affect everyone.

 Political tensions may arise from intensified regional conflicts, changes in the nature of rural class struggle, the growth of urban lumpens displaced by massive commercial agriculture and accelerated change. Commercial Farm proprietors ought to exercise good corporate governance to ward off instability; comply with local and international laws, transparency and accountability requirements, ethical norms, and environmental and social codes of conduct must be observed. Individual farmers should be enabled to freely buy and sell their land if they are to be motivated to participate in implementation of strategic solutions. There is a need to change attitudes but also a necessity for creating politics that can make the policies arising out of the strategies effective and changing the mindset of international institutions, developing nations and MNCs.

A major restructuring of rural society would destroy the stability of the NRM’s political base because it relies mainly on votes from rural constituencies. Impoverished peasants migrating to the urban areas aggravate the problem of unemployment and could constitute a political threat. Unfortunately, political expediency overrides economics in Africa; solutions that cause instability raise questions about the applicability of massive agrarian reform.

 Agrarian Reform through purposive specialised postgraduate training in Agribusiness maybe the answer to increasing purchasing power in the rural areas because through it the population can produce a surplus that can be converted into cash. The International Monetary Fund could play a positive role in reinforcing the efforts of governments and establishing strategic partnerships with private institutions with relevant and innovative programmes.

The writer is a former part-time lecturer of Resource Mobilization and Utilization in the Leadership and Human Relations Programme at Makerere University and currently Director of the School of Diplomacy, Governance and International Studies at Uganda Martyrs University.