Museveni wants importation of foreign seed stopped

President Museveni

President Yoweri Museveni has castigated imported seed as fake seed that should not be grown in Uganda.

Museveni urged NARO to start multiplying indigenous crop seeds crops like onions, pineapples, bananas etc that have natural compounds of food flavour.

Museveni made the comments while officiating at the handover of value addition equipment that was donated by farmers at the National Referral Value Addition centre in Namarere.

“I appeal to the managers of the agriculture sector to stop importing such seeds. Revert to indigenous plant seed multiplication,” he said.

But although expressed happiness for launching some of the equipment that was manufactured by locally fabricated  companies like Musa Body, he stopped shy of criticizing the Chinese companies which are the leading sellers of agricultural equipment.

“What we are doing today is just the beginning, we are going to have a massive launch. We have woken up. We are going to do more,” he said.

The Minister of MAAIF Vincent Ssempijja said that post harvest and value addition equipment and machinery is part of community investments, which is expected to stimulate local farmers’ savings and investment in agriculture.

“The equipment will also improve on the incomes of farmers with small farm holdings”, he said.

The Permanent secretary of MAAIF Puis Wakabi Kasajja said the ACDP sector mission is aimed at transforming less profitable subsistence farming into Commercial agriculture.

The ACDP project Coordinator Henry Napelet Opolot said that the project is a government initiative, being implemented by MAAIF with $150 million US dollars credit facility from IDA of the WB, whose matching grants have been signed with 193 area commodity cooperative enterprises (ACCEs) in 24 pilot cluster districts across the country.

One of the beneficiary officials, from Rukiga district representing Karubanda Tukorere Hamwe farmers cluster, Christine Muhwezi testified that the group elevated its beans produce from about three bags of beans to 9-12 bags of beans after being equipped. “On one acre of land, the production has also increased from 2000-20,000 tonnes of beans

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