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Ugandan NGO Helps to Improve Farming Practices
Farming runs in the veins of Dr Ruth Sebuliba’s family. Her father was an agriculture school teacher, and she shot to the top of academic achievement, when she obtained a PhD in Agriculture. Sandra Natukunda writes about a woman who believes the quality of seeds can changes the fortunes of food insecurity
She was the first Ugandan lady to get a PhD in agriculture in 2003. Dr Ruth Ssebuliba stands out as an inspiration for many women out there willing to take on commercial agriculture to a higher level.
Making agriculture even better has been a lifelong dream for Dr Ssebuliba and her inspiration to join the farming community is traced back to her family roots. She was raised by a father who was a popular village farmer and a teacher of agriculture in school, there farming became a part of her and that explains why she took it up to date. Dr Ssebuliba is a farmer and she has a small farm in the back yard of her home. While in secondary school, agriculture was her best performed subject, no wonder she pursued it at higher levels of learning. At university, Dr Ssebuliba read a Bachelors degree in Agriculture at Makerere University after which she became an assistant lecturer at the Faculty of Agriculture. While there, she decided to do a Master’s Degree in the same discipline at the University of Nairobi. Upon her return, she joined Naro and also formed an NGO called Sustainable Agriculture for Rural Development, abbreviated as SARD in Mpigi District and is currently, working with Uganda Seed Trade Association (USTA), which is involved in policy dialogue with government in order to create a favourable environment between government and the farming community. It is recognised as the voice of the seed industry and trains and sensitises member companies about using improved seeds.
The association works in collaboration with other organisation among which are ganda National Agro-input Dealers (Unada), AT Uganda Ltd and Usaid. As an Executive Secretary, Dr Sebuliba is in charge of developing programme activities to help farmers access the improved seeds and make sure these activities are implemented as well. She is also involved in developing proposals to raise funds to finance the activities. Dr Ssebuliba’s interest is the fact that seeds are a source of food.
“As an agriculturalist, I would want to see people with enough food to feed their families and enough to sell to make some money. That is my main interest in this organisation,” she says.
Besides increased seed production, the association has in many ways benefited farmers. It has trained and sensitised farmers on the advantages of using improved seed and farmers have benefited from this because they access improved seeds which in turn gives them healthy crops. More to that, the association has also been able to help grassroot farmers access improved seeds and hence become more aware of the difference in the way they have have been doing their farming.
Dr Ssebuliba says most farmers are quickly taking on improved seeds and are buying them in plenty.
“At the Jinja Agricultural Show, farmers bought seeds in plenty,” she said. She attributed this to the fact that there was ready market given the food shortage in the country at the time. However, she says, seed trade is successful, especially when the farmers have ready market.
According to the international seed federation of which USTA is a member, it is estimated that the seed market in Uganda contributes over $10m (Shs20b) to the economy annually.
As an executive secretary of the association, Dr Ssebuliba wants to make sure that over 50 per cent of the farmers in Uganda and around the region are using improved seeds. Her main priority is to help other associations come up with modern processing plants to produce the improved seed.
She explains that the importance of growing improved seed is not only its ability to grow more maturely but it is also pest and disease-resistant and it is more superior and improved compared to ordinary seed. That is why she continues to encourage farmers to use improved seed so that they can get better produce.
http://www.monitor.co.ug/Magazines/Farming/-/689860/893944/-/wvmedo/-/index.html
