Strengthening oversight of agricultural input suppliers can boost productivity

Like other African countries, Uganda’s agricultural sector is often touted as the backbone to the country’s economy, with various reports suggesting that the sector employs at least 70 per cent of the population, and contributes about 25 per cent to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

These assertions are, however, not often backed up by government commitments, with the sector’s budget allocations consistently averaging between 2.5 and three per cent of the national budget, way below the 10 per cent threshold that African countries, including Uganda, committed to under the 2003 Maputo Declaration (with countries reaffirming this commitment under the 2014 Malabo Convention).

The 10 per cent recommendation was based on the realisation that, as a continent, Africa was facing (and continues to face) imminent food insecurity, with a large part of the population suffering from chronic and severe malnourishment and that the continent had become a net importer of food.

In 2014, member states committed to accelerate agricultural growth by at least doubling current agricultural productivity levels by the year 2025. The countries agreed to create and enhance the necessary policy and institutional conditions, and support systems to facilitate this.

More specifically, the countries committed to, among other things, ensuring sustainable and reliable production of and access to quality and affordable agricultural inputs by providing ‘smart’ protection for smallholder farmers.

Unfortunately, more than 10 years later, smallholder farmers continue to struggle with accessing reliable and affordable agricultural inputs, especially genuine seeds, fertilisers, and farm equipment.

The situation is made worse by inaccessible and often piecemeal agricultural-related advisory services. As a result, many smallholder farmers tend to rely on informal networks, which increases their exposure to counterfeit inputs and price exploitation.

While there is a noticeable increase in the number of agricultural input dealers, equipment providers, and advisory professionals, the majority of those operating in the rural areas are not technically equipped nor adequately supported to provide quality input or advisory services to the farmers.

While the ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF) is the nationally-mandated agency to provide regulatory oversight, at the (district) local government level, the responsibility is quite scattered across different directorates and departments including the crop directorate, the animal directorate, the fisheries resources directorate, and the agricultural planning and support departments.

This often makes it hard for the different directorates to coordinate and execute the devolved functions, including ensuring that agriculture input suppliers are registered and licensed, the inputs are tested for quality control and that the conform to the national standards.

Addressing this oversight fragmentation, especially at the local government level, is critical in harmonizing the coordination and improving compliance.

Secondly, local government departments should support suppliers of inputs that have penetrated the countryside, with training and possible certification to ensure they are well prepared not only to provide quality agricultural inputs but also some backstopping in terms of agricultural advisory services to the farmers.

Additionally, the government should regulate prices by working out and distributing prices and margins for transportation beyond uptake centres.

For farmers, it is important that they seek to work in groups and build trust with the dealers of agricultural input to have any poorly performing agricultural inputs reimbursed; improve purchasing power through their farmer groups by coming up with a pre-season listing of required demand for agricultural input served to agricultural input dealers in time and holding them accountable for timely deliveries.

It is critical that the different departments leverage meaningful collaborations between the various non-governmental organisations, other private sector players operating in the different communities and the district local government departments to conduct joint monitoring and support supervision.

Lastly, it is important that the government commits to progressively achieving the 10 per cent budget allocation to the agriculture sector within the next five years.

The writer is a Postdoc Research Fellow at the Iowa State University Department of Agronomy, US.

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