Participants follow presentations during the Seventh National Agriculture and Food Security Forum held in Kampala on June 12, 2018. EPRC Photo
The jeopardies affecting the agricultural sector continue to elicit debate with experts from NUCAFE, Agro-consortium, Ministry of Finance and researchers now calling for more adoption of agricultural insurance to guard against risks.
Sarah Ssewanyana, the Executive Director Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC) says that farmers have to get security since agriculture in Uganda continues to face more risks compared to other sectors.
These risks include weather related threats, diseases, agro commodity price fluctuation, institutional risks (limited access to credit), individual risks, political risks among others.
The call was made during the Seventh National Agriculture and Food Security Forum held in Kampala on June 12, 2018 under the theme “Mitigating Agriculture Risks to enhance Food Security and Agriculture Commercialization in Uganda”.
Joan Nyangoma from the Agro-Consortium says that insurance premium services have grown to 75% (4.2bn annually) with about 50,000 farmers under agricultural insurance cover.
However, awareness about the agricultural insurance opportunities remains limited for small-scale farmers in Western, Eastern and Northern regions much as such consciousness prevails in central region.
According to David Muwonge of NUCAFE, high premiums and delays in payouts discourages most farmers from taking up crop insurance, which promotes use of improved technologies such as fertilizers.
With farmers easily accessing agricultural insurance through directly participating insurance companies, agro consortium, district farmer associations and participating financial institutions, government only needs to align the scattered and fragmented efforts to bring about a robust insurance scheme for farmers.