Farmers urge MPs to follow up on agriculture finances

Small-scale farmers have asked Members of Parliament on the Agriculture committee to diligently follow up all the funds allocated to them in the budget, claiming sometimes the money is misused.

They also want government to ensure greater non-state actors and farmers involvement in the designing, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of agricultural programs and policies.

"Every budget they announce finances allocated to Agriculture, but we observe a number of loopholes some finances being misused before they reach the grass root level," Hakim Baliraine, farmer, lamented during his presentation at breakfast Meeting with Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture.

He thus advised that civil servants should agree to work closely with Civil Society Organisation (CSOs) and farmers' organizations at grass root if they are to achieve good results.

Baliraine, a farmer from Gulu, was speaking on behalf of other small scale farmers during the Eastern and Southern African Small Scale Farmers' Forum (ESSAFF) at Hotel Africana recently.

During the event, which was under the theme, The Agriculture Budget We Want 2016/17 And Beyond, representatives of small scale farmers around the country met members on the Parliamentary committee on Agriculture to discuss, among other issues, the financing of agriculture budget.

He also implored the MPs to improve on the monitoring mechanism of the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development (MoFPED) by including independent third party such as CSOs to boost it especially at local government level for efficient flow of funds to the last recipients.

While responding to the queries, Margaret Kibaijana, MP Ibanda District, said although the committee advocates to allocate more money into Agriculture sector, much of it go without utilised, something she said disheartens them.

"How far would do you us to advocate for more funding if even the available money is not fully used? We cannot even get support," she said, disclosing that despite farmer's lamentation on the grass root, the ministry often times say they have enough finances.

She, however, supported the farmer's appeal for the transformation of various agricultural financing initiatives into an Agriculture Development Bank.

In their recommendations, farmers, through Daniel Lukwago of Nonner Consults, asked that government should transform the various agricultural financing initiatives into an Agriculture Development bank that will explicitly focus on small and medium farmers credit needs, hedge against risks like crop failures and price volatilities of agro-farmers.

Lukwago also recommended that Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF) should strategically shift development resources from non-wage recurrent to capital expenditures.

"Agriculture spending should focus on areas that contribute to increased productivity, including disease and pest control, irrigation, basic storage and post-harvest technologies, and the effective use and management of natural resources," he said during his presentation.

Kenneth Lubogo (Bulamoga County), the secretary of the committee, nonetheless, challenged small scale farmers to take agriculture as a business, saying many practice for family consumption. He observed that this should be one of the causes of the diminishing food production in the country.

"The rate of food production in Uganda dropped from 3.2 in 2008 to 1.8 in 2013. This should worry us that as population goes and food production going down, may result in starving in the near future," he observed.

Farmers also hinted on the Malabo declaration, saying MPs with support from farmers and CSOs should push the Ministry of Finance to abide by the Maputo Declaration.

Uganda is among the African countries that signed the Maputo Declaration in 2003 (later the Malabo Declaration June 2014), where they committed to implement the comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) and to raise budget allocations for Agriculture to a minimum of 10% of their individual countries' total national budget by 2008 (NEPAD, 2010).

They noted that, however, since then the share of the agricultural sector budget in the national budget has been declining from 5.0% in 2010/11 to 2.6% in 2015/16.