KAMPALA – Civil Society actors are pushing for an adequate supply of agricultural products in local markets to address the food shortage in the country.
According to Ruth Nabaggala, African Agroecology Entrepreneurship Project Officer of Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) Ugandan traders need to focus on supplying to the local markets to meet the high demand for agricultural products before selling to the international market.
“We need to ask ourselves; How beneficial is the global market compared to the local market? Have we satisfied the Ugandan market? Have we supplied every single person that is demanding the products that we are trying to send out there? Are we checking if it’s more profitable to take our products internationally?” wondered Nabaggala
She made the remarks on Wednesday while addressing the press at the first Ugandan Agroecology Entrepreneurs and Territorial Market Actors meeting held in Kampala.
The two-day meeting organised by Participatory Ecological Land Use Management, (PELUM Uganda) is aimed at enhancing collaboration of Agroecological Entrepreneurs, territorial market leaders, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) supporting AAE through peer-to-peer practical learning, experience sharing; self-examination using the B-Act tool for effective networking, communication, and resource mobilization.
“The whole background of this meeting is to bring together farmers producers, processes, value chain actors, Business Development Service Providers Government with basically the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and cooperatives, certifying bodies, academia, and the media to brainstorm on the different issues that are affecting our agroecology producers,” said Josephine Akia Luyimbazi the country coordinator PELUM Uganda said
Luyimbazi says currently, the production of agroecology is increasing which is attributed to the consumer awareness of the benefits of these products.
“We promote the production of different agricultural products ranging from vegetables, spices, agro-inputs like bio rationales and fertilizers to ensure that we are sustainably utilizing our natural resources and we are not degrading our natural environment,”
Increasingly, we saw the need to link the different agroecology actors to different markets. And we are starting with our very own local markets. Today we have chairpersons of different markets within Uganda. We have the Nakawa market represented we have Busega market represented. We have Nateete and Kasubi markets represented. These are some of the territorial markets in Uganda.
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A territorial market is characterized by agricultural food products, and fresh food products that are easy for somebody to access and consume.
Agroecology is a farming system that is based on three cornerstones as a practice, meaning that the practices you’re supposed to agroecological are those that will not harm the environment, but will instead rejuvenate the environment.
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