Agriculture is the back born of Ugandan Economy and the Government calls on farmers to practice commercial farming to improve on their household income. However, the biggest percentage of farmers in Uganda still practice subsistence farming especially the rural poor households. Therefore, Jewish Response Uganda comes in close this gap targeting both rural vulnerable Jewish and non-Jewish communities with agriculture project targeting mostly women and young people with the aim of improving the income level and food security of the project participants through providing them with farm inputs and agronomy services with the major focus on growing profitable.
We teach farmers to respect the delicate balance of nature. Its not always easy, but when we see fields thriving, we know we are leaving something better for the next generation. Its a journey of hope, hard work, and harmony with the earth.
We introduced for the first time green pepper growing in Eastern Uganda, we met resistance from our participants on acceptability of the new crop but this only took us one season and all turned out to be positive for the subsequent seasons after getting good yields. This helped us to build trust and waived for the introduction of other crops such as watermelon, tomatoes, onions and French beans growing.
We strive to support our farmers through the season from farm inputs provision such as seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, the support is based on available land size but a maximum of one acre. Every selected farmer is attached to a field trainer who visit them on weekly basis to offer agronomic services but also to collect information about the performance of the garden and report to the agronomist on weekly basis for extra agronomic advice.
We also support our farmers to cultivate their farm land at a half price using a tractor that was donated to Jewish response Uganda to support in Agriculture project. The half contribution from the farmer is majorly to meet the cost of fuel, maintenance and tractor operator. The only challenge is that the tractor is over worked during the peak season as it can’t serve the current number of farmers. We are still sourcing for funding to secure the second and third tractor to serve our farmers better.
We are always faced with a challenge of underfunding given the overwhelming number of qualifying agriculture participants. In order to address this as we mobilize resources elsewhere to enroll more farmers on the program. We have deployed a 3 season support model where farmers are given support for only 3 consecutive season to allow them save to invest 100% on their own once our support is withdrawn. We are mindful for sustainability purpose not give one off support because the farmer would have not stabilized to continue with farming without any support.
