Noise, congestion mar Jinja agriculture show

Aug 01, 2011

The Uganda National Farmers Federation was at it again this year with its annual Source of the Nile Agricultural Trade Show in Jinja from July 18 to 24 2011. This year’s theme — Promoting Agricultural Commercialisation to Access the East African Common Market — focuses on tapping into the East

By Nathan Were

The Uganda National Farmers Federation was at it again this year with its annual Source of the Nile Agricultural Trade Show in Jinja from July 18 to 24 2011. This year’s theme — Promoting Agricultural Commercialisation to Access the East African Common Market — focuses on tapping into the East African bloc market.

The event that attracts over 200 exhibitors annually mainly from the East African Community, however, seems to be drifting from its initial mission of creating an avenue for farmers to learn better farming methods.

The show comes at a time when Uganda is grappling with hyper inflation largely fuelled by the rising prices of food. In fact, the food crisis is not about to end because farmers sold their maize pre-maturely to middlemen mainly from neighbouring countries and there seems to be an outflow of grains from Uganda to these countries. This partly explains why the price of maize flour is not coming down despite the fact some parts of the country are already harvesting maize.

This years’ agricultural show also attracted exhibitors from Egypt, Brazil and South Africa who mainly showcased appropriate technologies for water harvest and irrigation that Ugandan farmers need, to deal with the changing weather conditions and management of the growing food demands.

Unfortunately, the show seems to be taken over by telecommunication companies and breweries. These play very loud music from morning to morning, making it difficult for incoming farmers to learn from the exhibitors.

The objective of the trade show, in my view, is to enable farmers learn from the exhibitors through one-on-one or group sessions in a quiet and less noisy environment. But the noise within the show cannot allow this learning to take place.

The situation has further been made worse by the number of school going children from as low as kindergarten who flock the show on a daily basis. This creates a lot of congestion within the showground and greatly inhibits the show’s objective.

It is strongly advised that the organisers of this show set guidelines for noise.

The choice of selection of the exhibitors by the show organisers is very good and addresses agricultural value chain needs.

With the East African Common Market now taking shape and the emergence of South Sudan, one of the best destinations for Uganda’s food crops, small-holder farmers can only take advantage of this huge food basket if they adopt some of the best agricultural innovations which this event showcases.

In future, the show should explore ways through which small-holder farmers such as those organised in farmer groups through their district farmers associations can directly deal with the buyers of their produce in places such as South Sudan. Much of the farmers’ profits are lost to middlemen.

Aspects of post-harvest handling are key and mini seminars can be organised within and during the course of the show to sensitise farmers. But all these can only take place in a quiet and noise-free environment.

The writer is a market and
product specialist
were.nathan@gmail.com


Send your questions to harvestingmoney@newvision.co.ug or SMS by typing Farming (leave space) make your comment and give your name and send to 8338

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});