Ensuring access to high-quality seeds
Oct 28, 2019
All this is in line with Uganda Vision 2040 that purposes to achieve a transformed Ugandan society
If it's true that you reap what you sow, then it only makes sense to sow the very best. The higher the quality of your seeds are, the better they perform, and the more productive your crop will be and the greater the returns.
Quality seed is the most renewable agricultural resource and one of the key determinants of successful farming; a foundation for both crop, food, feed and edible wild plants - a premise for food security and nutrition, export competitiveness and our natural heritage. The second National Development Plan (NDP II) enlists agriculture as one of top five priority areas for investment that has the greatest multiplier effect on Uganda's economy.
NDP II emphasises commercialization of agriculture to increase production, productivity for food security, improvement of household incomes and export. All this is in line with Uganda Vision 2040 that purposes to achieve a transformed Ugandan society from a peasant to a modern and prosperous country within the next 25 years. This will require revitalization of the current seed systems.
The National Agriculture Policy 2013 is the overall national framework aimed at modernizing agriculture through a more pluralistic, inclusive, equitable, decentralized and integrated sector. The seed subsector is an integral part of the agriculture sector. The Uganda Government has made strides to put in place a Seed policy in 2018 - a declaration of intent on how the seed subsector should develop, a regulatory framework through the Seed and Plant Act 2006 and regulations to operationalize it.
This policy and regulatory framework is essential to promote, regulate and control plant breeding and variety release; seed multiplication, conditioning, marketing, importation and quality control. The goal of the policy is to guide, promote, develop and regulate the seed sector in order to ensure availability and access to safe and high-quality seed to all stakeholders for increased food security, household income, wealth creation and export earnings.
This encompasses a vision of a competitive, profitable and sustainable well-regulated seed sub-sector that ensures availability and access to safe and high-quality seed under pluralistic seed systems.