{UAH} Impressed with NRM nomads turned modern Cattle Keeper

Every one created a farm - Uganda was destined to Argentinian meat production but alas this is Africa.

Agriculture with NRM is no hope. The average age of a farmer in Uganda is 40 years. What does that tell you – people enter agriculture as a by the way! If you leave the village even the school will inform you that – you have landed.

They however do not know an avocado a piece is 1.5 British pounds down town in London, and groundnut 25 gm is 25 crowns in Gothenburg.

My index is vanilla in Kyagwe. Kalangala forests would have been turned into vanilla farms instead of palm oil, if trees had no value. You could grow vanilla and preserve the forest. Now, recently Uganda government dispatched 100 Ugandans to Isreal to go and learn modern farming, which later will be transferred to a tropical and semi tropical climate!

Ah, Lord Bless them.

27 years of modern cattle farming has a tale to tell about Uganda's agriculture potential. Majority professional cattle keepers, it is alleged, have either or have been attached to NRM government apart from Mulwana. They neither export milk nor meat if they do – it cross Katonga to Kampala.

This tells us something.

That even when you are rich, the unsustainability of agriculture investment and production in Uganda, requires a completely different society configuration to make agriculture sustainable at all.

Within just three month - three types of chemically based drinks have hit the market. That is Riham, fissty (?) etc. This is in addition to mountain DEW, cocacola, pepsi brands, you name it.  

And these are making cut throat advertisement virtually every where. And the poor Ugandan farmer?!

Now, have you ever heard this bloody government coming up with incentives to crop and fruit growers (oranges, pineapples, apples (kabale), pawpaws, passion fruits) – if you are a grower you will just fail there and then.

The market is in Kampala, where NRM middle class is firmly located! You can Imagine!

If you were to export cabbages and water melons to Sudan, be aware that you might get stuck into the mud between Gulu and Nimule and the product get rotten. That is if you are not shot by the Dinkas on the way. Or if you are to take your pineapples to Kenya, traffic police will demand their fair share of your earnings.

There are simply too many issues: corruption, lack of efficient transport facilities, supportive tax regimes you name it.

Big Asian investors can be given tax holidays to import perfumes and toilet seats, for their hotel investments on free land.

Besides, this impotent government can for example go to Bank of Uganda – get 700 million dollars, buy a most modern all weather all purpose fighter aircraft which could be shot down in seconds, since Uganda airforce hardly have any accompanying terrestrial and celestial early warning system. Today, any country worthy a name, will know which type of plane has lifted from any single airport in 500 km radius; determine speed, direction and even load.

Those planes are sitting ducks.

More to the point, Uganda's enemy number one, who can turn against the government, is the very poor Ugandans!  Not Sudan, Congo, Kenya or Tanzania besieged with their own social and political maladies. Those can be kept at bay by Kale' republic guards helped with apartheid terror weaponry.

If you took for example 100 million dollars and started offering breakfast and launch to all children from regional based agriculture farms – you would have created a professional agricultural class that does not need to depend on the political class in Kampala to make ends meet.

Amuru will not need to grow sugar canes for example. But NRM must be seen for having delivered.

The merchandise going through Oraba, and Nimule would have enticed any sleeping dog, I mean politicians to set up goods shades Complete with cold facilities in Oraba, Yumbe and Nimule to the Congo, Southern Sudan and Somalia if you want.

Well, Uganda under NRM has now two squadrons worthy 1.5 billion dollars of the most modern fighter plan. The Karamonj are starving and Kampala is full of street rough sleepers and emaciated children.

Before Karuma – enormous amount of water flows from river Kafu and also Nile River.  And these are the driest areas in Uganda. Can't government start major ponds to grow fish first to feed her population and then for export?

Aah ha! No the Batoro, do not eat fish anyhow those who eat them can try growing them.

In Pakwach the Angala is growing bigger – but the technology to submerge the wetland, so that more fish can be farmered in these natural environments is also very illusive!

The consumption of animal products in this country is very low – leading to some cattle keepers, abandoning the cattle keeping trade all together. Now translate that into; tomatoes, orange, mango, vegetables, pineapples, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, avocado growers, fish farmers. Even cashew nuts growing wildly, from which small scale farmers could make vegetable oils is a dead end.  

Just one meal to seven million primary students, will have enormous linkages – but we are still looking in a stack of hopes and wishful thinking, for the illusive middle class china is bring very quickly to Uganda.

As pupils as prisoners they do better with posho and beans. Africaaaaa….. ?

 

Bwanika