Agriculture is the backbone of Uganda and contributes approx. 24.1% of its GDP as of 2022. In South-Western Uganda, crops grown include plantain bananas, millet, maize, sorghum, and maize among others. This has been attributed to low-temperature variability, fertile soils, and two rainy seasons over much of the country resulting in multiple crop harvests per year which have increased incomes and food, especially for low-income earning people.
Although in recent years, agricultural production and productivity is decreasing due to climate variabilities/change due to deforestation, over-cultivation, and emissions of greenhouse gases through burning fossil fuels which has tremendously changed the rainfall patterns and disrupted the ecosystem hence killing useful microbes necessary for crop growth and development.
Various interventions have been introduced to reduce on effects of climate change i.e., planting trees for ecosystem restoration (carbon dating), reducing, reusing, repairing, and recycling, climate-smart innovations in agriculture like the use of organic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, and integrating indigenous knowledge/culture in agriculture.
According to Warren, D.M et al,2002, indigenous knowledge is ideas, beliefs, values, norms, and rituals that are native and embedded in the minds of people. Local people including farmers are the custodians of this knowledge as they are knowledgeable about their own situations, their resources, what works and what doesn’t work and how one change impacts other parts of their system. Hence a connotation of Agriculture.
Farmers employ various indigenous practices including early planting, selection of clean flowers and leaves of eucalyptus to repel storage pests, use of urine to fertilize the soil, weeding, and crop rotation to increase production and productivity of crops. With the changing modernity, indigenous knowledge needs to be integrated with improved methods like the use of rows, improved seeds, and practicing soil conservation techniques like contour plowing among others. Promising indigenous knowledge can be promoted through pieces of training, public sensitizations on radios, exhibitions, and collaboration of Research institutions with farmer communities to help in the development and certification of herbal concoctions to be accepted on the market. This will not only increase crop production and productivity but also reduce climate change effects thus different SDG goals.
Written by Ms. Ndyamuhaki Lynettee.
The author is an Agronomist, Researcher, and Innovator at Mbarara University of Science and Technology and a devoted member