State minister for Agriculture, Christopher Kibanzanga has warned that the country is set to experience hunger and famine in the coming weeks, maybe even months, and therefore families should use their food sparingly while traders should limit exports.
“We are certainly not going to have enough food. Our appeal to farmers is not to take everything to the market,” Mr Kibanzanga said. “Traders should take [sell] food to areas like eastern Uganda, northern Uganda and Karamoja sub-region which do not have food.”
The minister says the looming food shortages are a result of delayed rains as well as the drought that has stretched beyond March into April resulting in crop failure.
He adds that government will support mini and large scale irrigation schemes across the country to minimize over-reliance on rain-fed agriculture as it is done currently.
It might be remembered that at the beginning of March, the Uganda National Meteorological Authority (UNMA), the government agency for weather forecast, predicted that most parts of the country would receive plenty of rainfall. They said farmers were free to start planting their crops.The forecast followed some occasional showers that enticed farmers to start planting crops, but the skies soon dried up and crops wilted under the scorching sunshine.
UNMA later issued a statement attributing the current dry spell conditions to the tropical cyclone which last month ravaged Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Madagascar and left an estimated 1,000 people dead.
The weather forecasting agency said the cyclone had led to the development of a low pressure system around the Mozambique channel, which resulted in the weakening of southeasterly trade winds. That these winds became diverted towards the channel, depriving moisture laden winds to reach our country which is why we have experienced the dry spells.