Like the biblical prodigal son who “came back to himself” after spending a while in the wilderness of confusion, Government has finally made a U-turn and rescinded its unwarranted five-month suspension of NAADS.
By restoring NAADS, government has only corrected a deliberate fault and does not deserve any applause. In a country where farming is still entirely dependant on weather, farmers strictly align their activities to weather patterns. Whoever wants to support them must synchronise their support with their seasonal calendar. Government should therefore apologise for the gross disruption it caused on farming activities.
Moreover, government has never been convincing on why it banned NAADS in September 2007. The expert government panel which facilitated NAADS design consultations identified lack of farmer access to information, knowledge and technology as the biggest impediment to agricultural growth. It envisaged an agricultural transformation process maturing over at least 25 years and thus recommended that NAADS be given enough time (25 years) to build a firm foundation for sustainable, self-propelling farming enterprises.
However, government now wants to discount the projected achievements of the 25-year programme into two, three or maximum five years. By blasting NAADS for “having nothing to show” other than spending a lot on farmers’ education, government behaved like the impatient idealist, Obi Okwonko, whom Chinua Achebe portrays in his novel No Longer at Ease. Obi is out of touch with reality after spending a while in a western university and clamours upon his return, for space where he “can stand and move the world.” At the end, he becomes a victim of his impatient idealism. He is dejected, rejected by his own people, finally arrested and convicted in court.
Like the impatient idealist, government has expressed its desire to “give Uganda a new face” in the immediate term. It has reportedly completed a restructuring of NAADS so that it primarily focuses on agro input supply rather than information, knowledge, and farmers’ education. The restructuring has in essence converted NAADS into a relief organisation. How despicable!
While I appreciate that farmers are needy, NAADS objective was to fulfil the biblical philosophy: teaching man how to fish rather than give him fish” in accordance with expert panel recommendations. The “trained angler” would obviously need a “hook” to do a good job – which NAADS was providing through its enterprise promotion and technology multiplication strategy.
Obviously, the relief approach will not create a sustainable impact on farming communities. By their nature, relief programmes only provide a cosmetic end product. I have witnessed farmers cooking and eating hybrid seeds meant for demonstration and multiplication. In several parts of the country, there have been reports of farmers slaughtering imported exotic boar goats during Christmas, Easter and weddings rather than rearing them to cross breed with, and improve local goats. In Kabale, an innovative donkey initiative meant to alleviate constrained transportation of farm produce in remote, inaccessible villages ended disastrously when some malicious farmers poisoned and killed all the donkeys. Etc. Looking back, one key lesson learnt was that farmers were not adequately educated before introducing those technologies.
Government must realise that farmer education is the ignition key for agricultural transformation. The adoption process for any innovation starts with awareness. Only when somebody is aware about an innovation is he/she likely to develop interest. Interest will often be followed by a trial and evaluation phase before farmers choose to adopt or not.
Farmer education (demonstrations, seminars and workshops, music, dance drama, etc) catalyses the adoption process and creates necessary farmer demand for innovations. By restructuring NAADS into a relief organisation, government has effectively suffocated a vital catalyst for the adoption process. In the end, agricultural technologies will be thrown at ignorant farmers who will not know what to do with those technologies. Won’t that spell “business-as-usual?”
Let government be forewarned that if it must push more agro inputs to farmers, it ought to ensure that such a precarious detour doesn’t devalue the role of information, knowledge and farmer education. It is said, “You may force a cow to the river but you can’t force it to drink.” The onus is on government to avoid the predicament of Chinua Achebe’s impatient idealist!
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