The Minister of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF) Vincent Ssempijja advised farmers in Greater Masaka region to tap into the government’s Shs40 billion fund that was sent to the area through the Agriculture Cluster Development Project (ACDP).
ACDP is designed to support the intensification of on-farm production through the provision of subsidized inputs using an electronic voucher (e-voucher) system and improve value addition and market access through provision of matching grants for post-harvest and value addition facilities and also fixing road chokes.
It is also to help to strengthen policy and regulatory framework in input quality assurance.
Farmers are given matching grants of up to $75,000 to support 67% of required investments in acquiring postharvest and value addition infrastructure.
The World Bank has invested $150 million into the project, which is to end in 2022 and started in 2016.
The minister had gone to the region on a monitoring tour aimed at rejuvenating farmer cooperatives in Mukungwe and Kabonera sub-counties.
“We cannot achieve our development agenda in agriculture without cooperatives, therefore, we need farmers to come together for a common goal that is aimed at improving household incomes,” the minister said.
“We as government we are ready to support those who come together for a common goal, that is why you are now seeing projects like ACDP coming up to support you with storage facilities, value addition machinery and others.”
To benefit from the Shs40bn fund, farmers are required to form consortiums or value chains of 20 participants. According to a statement from the ministry, the tour showed that some farmers collude with middlemen to flout MAAIF’s post-harvest handling regulations on products such as maize and coffee by engaging in unhealthy drying and storage of the produce.
In this regard, Ssempijja directed the police and sub-county chiefs to arrest those engaged in this vice, to ensure that our agricultural products are competitive on the regional and global markets.
“The recent temporary ban on our agricultural products by Kenya, was not because of the quality rather abundant produce that may have impacted on domestic prices. However, we also need to self-reflect and see that we handle our produce after harvesting well,” Ssempijja said.
“So, we need more policing to enforce the right post-harvest handling measures.” The farmers also appealed to Ssempijja to make extension services easily accessible to which he advised them to organise themselves into groups so that extension officers address their problems at once.
