Annual report of the Agriculture Department for the year ended 31st December 1961
Average rating
Cast your vote
You can rate an item by clicking the amount of stars they wish to award to this item.
When enough users have cast their vote on this item, the average rating will also be shown.
Star rating
Your vote was cast
Thank you for your feedback
Thank you for your feedback
Corporate Author
Agriculture Department, Uganda ProtectorateDate
1961
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
There were no changes in the basic policy of the Department which remains as follows:-(i) To ensure the food supplies of the people of the country.(ii) To conserve the natural resources. (iii) To improve the quality and increase the quantity of our cash crops.(iv) To blend the whole into a sound system of agriculture.2. Uganda is blessed with fertile soils and normally a well distributed rainfall which makes farming a reasonably secure occupation. There is an abundance of good cultivable land and the real problem facing the territory is how to break through the level of subsistence agriculture.3. The short answer is that the farmers are hopelessly under-capitalised and the bulk of the work has still to be done with the hoe. Production is not keeping abreast with development which makes Uganda a poor country economically.It is not always appreciated that all the increase in production in the post-war period can be accounted for by the natural increase in the population and that the increase in Robusta coffee production was at the expense of the cotton crop in Buganda.4. Last year the emphasis was on concentration of effort to give the maximum assistance to the progressive or emergent farmer in order to develop a class of Yeoman Farmer which will form the backbone of sound agricultural development -in other words, every good farmer must "be given the tools with which to do the job".5. Nineteen sixty-one saw two major advances in this drive to raise the general standard of farming above the subsistence level. These were the promulgation of the Progressive Farmers Loans Scheme "rid the AgriculturalSubsidy Scheme. These two schemes, which are complementary have made it possible for every progressive farmer to obtain the essential equipment he needs to farm his land properly. The plough must replace the hoe and row cropping must replace the more haphazard broadcasting so that farmers can plan and use their labour more rationally. The major difficulty has been to design a seeder or planter which will sow the wide range of crops which an African farmer requires to grow and that this has been done is very largely due to the initiative and drive of the Special Development Section of the Department. The way is now wide open to break through from subsistence agriculture to farming in its true sense.6. In October the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development published its plan for the economic development of Uganda. The plan has, as its basis the development of agriculture and forms a blueprint which if adoptedwholeheartedly by Government could result in an agricultural revolution.Pages
63Publisher or University
Agriculture Department