ICON Patron Bitature advises Ibanda residents to focus on high price commercial crops to enhance income and food security.
Drake Nyamugabwa
The Patron of Ibanda Community Organisation Network (ICON) Dr. Patrick Bitature has urged the people of Ibanda and the Ankole region to recommit themselves to embracing commercial agriculture focusing on high price crops including horticulture, coffee, and vanilla among others to improve their household incomes and enhance food security amidst crop price inflations.
Dr. Patrick was recently officiating at the annual dialogue and exhibition of ICON held at Ibanda University a sister institute under Simba Group where over 200 farmers, academicians, innovators, local leaders, students and others were in attendance.
Dr. Patrick also the Chairman of Simba group added that with the good climate of Ibanda and the local business network, there is a need to advantage to ensure sustainable incomes and food which he said can be boosted by the available market for the products.
“Nobody should be poor in a place like Ibanda that has vast arable, fertile land, where one does not need fertilizers to produce. We only need to plan well, observe good practices and embrace modern methods like mechanized farming” he said.
The theme of the dialogue was “Developing Ibanda through agriculture modernization and value-addition: Challenges and opportunities”
Talking about coffee and horticulture farming. Bitature pictured above said that farmers need to ensure best practices in order to reap big from the production adding that farmers can supplement their production with other crops like onions, tomatoes, avocados, and others that have high demand locally and abroad.
“Let us stabilize and get the big screen size coffee to be competitive. This might take 3-5 years, but we can do it. This way we shall be able to compete with other areas” he said
Since 2021, over 502 community members have signed up to be part of ICON to be among champions of development in the region.
Meanwhile Fred Zake, The Executive Director of Hortifresh, an association for fresh fruits and vegetables farmers in Uganda said that at the moment, the fresh fruits and vegetable sector is one of the key sectors of the economy and Uganda stands very well positioned.
“There is a need to invest in infrastructure such as cold storage and transportation, pack houses and irrigation systems and also extend credit facilities to farmers because horticulture is a very risky venture and therefore private financial institutions are not always willing to lend to us,” he said
In terms of the production of fresh fruits and vegetables in Africa, Uganda is second to Nigeria with about 5.8 million metric tones produced with exports at about $35 million a year.
European Union, which is Uganda’s largest buyer of fruits and vegetables through the COLEACP program is providing a grant of 25 million euros towards horticulture sector in Africa with Uganda as one of the beneficiaries to improve its horticulture exports to Europe.
