Challenges
Threats to Food Security
Uganda’s fertile lands have long been the envy of Africa, producing a rich bounty and variety of foods from grains to livestock, as well as abundant wildlife and other foods from our vast forests. Sustaining this biodiversity is critical to providing food security for our rapidly-growing population, especially children in low-income families.
Numerous environmental threats now jeopardize our ability to feed ourselves sustainably, especially those of us who depend on subsistence farming. This damages our chances to reach by 2015 the Millennium Development Goals Target 1C, which states, “Halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.”
These threats include conversion of fertile crop and grasslands through land-grabbing into factory farms growing commodity crops like palm oil for export, construction of dams that flood some of our most fertile small farms, poisoning our soils and wildlife with indiscriminate use of dangerous pesticide and fertilizers, over-harvesting of forest timber for firewood, climate change impacts disrupting historic rainfall patterns, and declining fisheries.
Important Threats
For example, forest biodiversity is more than an environmental value in Uganda – it provides livelihood for thousands of small communities that depend on them for food, fuel, materials, and medicines. It is an intimate, life-sustaining relationship that depends on healthy forests protected from man’s follies.
Moreover, fishing has declined sharply in recent years, a hardship for the estimated one million Ugandans who depend on fishing in our rivers, wetlands and lakes as a source of income. Because of poor fisheries management and environmental degradation, natural waters that each year produced 300,000 tonnes of fish in the 1990s now produce only 80,000 to 100,000 tonnes, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.
A growing number of fish farms produce about 90,000 to 100,000 tones of fish in cages, but they pollute adjacent natural waters and cause other environmental problems. Fish farming is not a sustainable solution.
Climate change has dramatically altered rainfall patterns throughout Uganda. Semi-arid areas find themselves with longer dry periods or sudden destructive rains. Other areas find that dry seasons end earlier by heavy rains seldom experienced at those times. Farming families who over generations had a dependable calendar of climate cycles now experience disruptions that hinder their ability to produce food for themselves and others.
Moreover, the subordinate role of women in traditional communities means that they are kept by outmoded gender roles away from decision-making and knowledge sharing in attempts to solve food security problems. Men alone cannot solve these complex problems at either the national or community level without the full participation of women. Gender mainstreaming is a food security necessity, not just an equal rights issue.
Government Must Act
Uganda’s leaders must take seriously their very basic responsibility to reach Target 1C and to enforce environmental and development laws. Only then can we sustain our ability to produce enough food to nourish our growing population – and to export the rest to other nations. These laws include a broad range of protections that are more honored in the breach because of indifference and corruption. Sustainable forestry practices are well-researched and feasible for Ugandans to adopt.
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