The recent drought has at once alerted us to our
deficiencies in our agriculture production and reawakened a drive to revitalise
the sector.
How is it that a country with half the arable land in the
region has people suffering starvation? How is that our crops dried up in the
fields when a fifth of our land mass is under water? And on a macro level how
is it that the 70 percent of our people who rely on the land directly for a
living, account for 30 percent of our economic output or GDP?
Given our natural endowments in land, weather and manpower it
is obvious that we are performing well below our potential. Reversing this
trend of affairs should be the concern of everybody in the country.
A lot of the debate has revolved around increasing
production, value addition and market access locally and internationally. And
rightly so.
Taking one example the Uganda Coffee Development Authority
says that the average yield per hectare is half a ton of coffee. But meanwhile
within our own borders there are farms that produce more than two tons a hectare
by employing improved farming methods, the judicious use of the fertiliser and
irrigation.
According to a recent World Economic Forum study done on the
continent irrigation improves farm productivity by 90 percent, fertiliser use
by 61 percent and mobile based information services improve farmer incomes by
as much as 30 percent.
But what brings all this together would be extension
services which are shown to raise productivity by as much as 80 percent.
Production is where it begins but similar deficiencies – or
worse, show up, up and down the agricultural value chain.
But in all the debate we seem to ignore or pay little
attention to is the role of entrepreneurship or the businessman in this process
of commercialisation of agriculture.
The entrepreneur manipulates the factors of production –
land, capital and labour in order to achieve a return be it profit, or these
days, to create a social good in what is called social entrepreneurship.
Part of the reason we are in the midst of such abundance but
remain poor is because our entrepreneurship skills are lacking, not up to the
challenge of exploiting our natural bounty.
How prepared are we to take advantage of the agricultural
opportunities around us?
There is a market locally, regionally, even internationally
for whatever we produce from groundnuts to eggs to ginger to goats, name it.
Because for as long as the human race exists and continues to function the way
it does, food will always be in demand.
Money can be made wherever there is a will and a market but
what often happens is that the person who has the deal is not up to it.
This is the key challenge I see. That we do not have the
entrepreneurial capacity to aggregate our resources to not only jump start
production but to take advantage of the vast market in food all around us.
I have been a business man for all of my adult life and the
better part of my childhood and I can attest to the saying that luck is when opportunity
meets preparation.
At PSFU our members benefit from a host of business
development services that can put anybody in a good position to take advantage
of the opportunities in the agricultural sector.
It cannot be emphasised enough but it is one thing to grow
plants or rear animals but another to take them to market and show a return on
a sustainable basis.
Our agribusinesses – which is how we should think about it
rather than just farmers, need to understand how to do market research, how to
keep books, how to source funding, how to cooperate with other farmers,
suppliers and clients .
All these can be learnt by trial and error but why not
hasten the process and get good advice.
This is important because to make agriculture a sustainable
enterprise not only for individuals but for the whole country we require more
than planting and harvesting or herding animals, we need good business sense to
underpin the process.
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