UGANDA'S PIONEER GMs FLOURISHING AT KAWANDA
By Henry Lutaaya
From a distance they look like mundane banana plants, until one gets closer to the fence and reads the words on a signpost outside the metallic gate: “GM banana plants. For research purposes only not approved for food or feed. Authorised personnel only.’
Over 150 green banana plants (bogoya) are pushing aggressively towards the sky, but inside a high security fence.
In fact this garden measuring nearly a quarter of an acre is under 24/7 security protection and even for authorised persons, one has to go through a laborious exercise of answering questions of who they are, where they come from, what they do etcetera.
As Dr. Andrew Kiggundu, the head of the National Agricultural Biotechnology Centre at Kawanda Agricultural Research Institute told this reporter during a recent visit: “This is the only advanced Genetically Modified farm in the country.”
He quickly added while referring to the confined garden that: “As you can see, they are not zombies,” a statement in relief that his team’s long time efforts in trying to find a solution to some of the farmers’ problems were after all bearing fruits.
The scientists have introduced a gene from rice called Chitinase into the bogoya with the hope that the new bogoya will resist the disastrous black sigatoka disease that is wrecking havoc in all types of bananas in the country.
Kiggundu’s words would indeed go towards dispelling rumours and allaying fears that Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) are dangerous for agriculture and for human consumption.
After years of theory and practice in their laboratories, last November, Kawanda researchers moved their experiments of GM bogoya into the confined field.
It is from here that they will observe their products’ growth. In between the GM plants, they have planted local breeds such that when they later introduce black sigatoka, they would be able to monitor the rate of resistance to the disease.
As Kiggundu explained, their hope is that the crop will not only prove resistant to the disease, it will bear delicious fruits just like the conventional plants. This experiment is expected to last about two years with just one harvest season and all the plants will be incinerated.
“We do not want any part of these plants to get out of this testing ground,” Kiggundu said, adding: “There is no law that governs the transfer and distribution of the technology in the country. We’re only using the law that permits research work.”
Although he says parliament has taken far too long to come up with an appropriate law governing the importation, propagation and use of GMO in the country, he admits that even his project has not yet proved to be successful. He says it could take another 3-5 years to ascertain that it actually resists black sigatoka.
Dr. Kiggundu is also leading Masters and PhD students who are using the same technology to develop small yellow bananas (Ndiizi) that mature early. Others are working on late ripening of Mpologoma – a popular species of the Matooke that is cooked.
Another Masters student Moses Matovu is studying the effect of eating the GMOs by humans. Assuming that all these projects are successful, Kiggundu says that in the near future, Ugandans will have a super banana.
TISSUE CULTURE FOR HIGHER CROP YIELDS
By Henry Lutaaya
Erostus Nsubuga is a prominent agricultural researcher in Uganda. Using modern tissue culture technology in his Agro-genetic laboratories located along Mityana road, he produces millions of crop seedlings for supply to farmers.
As Nsubuga explains, tissue culture allows a farmer to plant large tracts of land with the same variety of a crop like pineapples and be able to harvest in large quantities. Nsubuga says using crops produced through tissue culture, farmers can have products tasting fairly the same way, with relatively the same size as demanded by many European supermarkets.
The National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS), has now contracted Nsubuga’s firm -- AGT laboratories -- to produce millions of banana, pineapple and orange seedlings which the organisation distributes to individual as well as communities. According to NAADS officials, tissue culture is important in helping farmers get high-yield and disease resistant crops which can earn better prices from the market.
The use of improved seeds is considered a key component of NAADS’ new campaign code-named the Value Chain Partnerships. The underlying principle in such partnerships is improving communication between farmers and consumers of agricultural produce. This is especially important in the export market for agricultural products where consumers want high-quality, homogenous agricultural products with almost the same taste.
As Dr. Salim Nahdy, the executive director of NAADS says: “We are promoting Value Chains among farmers, and buyers of agricultural produce so as to enable farmers get better prices in the market.”
The value chains campaign however comes in the wake of many agricultural sector interventions that have failed to safeguard farmers from exploitation by middlemen.
Nahdy says that Ugandan farmers continue to live in poverty because “they are strictly price takers, they are not assured of product quality and mainly produce primary products with no value added”.
Nahdy cites the example of Jakana juice makers. He says that most orange farmers in Uganda cultivate one orange specie known as ‘Washington Neville’ as opposed to Valencia preferred by Jakana.
“What we do is we go backwards to multiply bigger quantities of what Jakana wants by advising farmers on what they should plant. And it works with other crops to target production to suit what the market requires”
He adds: “The partners already have their money, but they are not assured of quantity and quality of the produce.”
“So we support them but with very clear indications of performance targets. We help them reach more farmers so that they (farmers) benefit directly”
Nahdy however stressed that value chains differ from most government-farmer relationships as they do not encourage hand-outs.
“We support people like Nsubuga to be able to produce seedlings for farmers, and we support other partners to provide advisory services to farmers on issues of quality, quantity and specificity.”
After years of trying and failing to find a feasible strategy to solving the massive poverty conundrum across the country, Value Chains were hailed by Finance minister Dr. Ezra Suruma as having a potential to put money in the pockets of farmers this time round.
VCs were co-designed by NAADS together with the Agricultural Sector Support Programme (ASSP) - a Danish government- sponsored programme.
Dr. Suruma, while launching the first 12 VC partnerships at Africana this week admitted that over the years he has learnt that previous prescriptions for poverty have aimed at addressing just part of the problem and have ended up in failure.
“The issue of Value Chain is a very important development in our thinking. In the past we’ve tended to thinking in isolation about various aspects of production, marketing and so on.”
He added: “In fact when I had just become minister, I stressed productivity. But then it became clear very quickly, that productivity requires inputs and finance. In other areas people were saying they had increased production but they didn’t have markets etc.”
Suruma said: “Now I think it’s becoming clearer that to solve the problem you have to address the whole chain not part of it to achieve development.”
Suruma added that for Ugandan farmers to effectively compete in the global market, they need to integrate in value chains to appreciate the requirements of the more advanced and specialised markets.
Suruma pledged that in the coming financial year, the government will devote more resources to supporting this and other programmes to make agriculture competitive.
In one of his very first public pronouncements after taking power in 1986, President Yoweri Museveni launched what he called a war to end exploitation of the farmer by the middle man.
Subsequent measures included liberalising the sale of farm produce by ending the monopoly of cooperative unions that used to control prices for farmers. Farmers could now determine who could buy their produce. For a few years, the new system brought some happiness to a few farmers. Their joy was however short-lived until other types of middle men emerged to exploit farmers.