Government advised to provide walking tractors to villages
The Alebtong LC5 chairperson David Kennedy Odongo has advised the government to provide hand held tractors to every village in the country to increase production.
Odongo said it will help 39% of people trapped in subsistence farming to migrate faster to commercial agriculture since it is only the available option to fight household poverty and boost production.
Odongo was receiving 14 walking tractors with a big one given out by the government through ministry of agriculture, animal, industry and fisheries at the ceremony held at the district headquarters.
He urged the farmers to embrace the development of using the machineries so that they can have more that they can sell and invest.
“With this arrangement, I want to thank the government so much but I pray that they should give more and more such every village has a walking tractor to boost production,” he said.
“More production means more products that will come on board. Therefore we shall also attract the market because markets always look for products,” he added.
He said it has been their cry that they should elevate our farmers from subsistence farming to commercial farming.
“But what has been our major challenge is that is the size of the land because the tools that we were using is hand hoes,” Odongo said.
The Government Chief Whip, Denis Hamson Obua handed of the tractors and the bigger one was offered to Amugu Agro Technical institute to ease training of students pursuing agricultural course.
Odongo said that the time frame for farming is according to seasons and by government extending its hand to support farmers with walking tractors it will cause a lot of change in the farming methods.
Obua said the tractors are in fulfillment of the National Resistance Movement manifesto of sifting people of Uganda from subsistence agriculture to commercial venture and also aiming at highlighting the strategic direction and vision of President Yoweri Museveni.
“We are all aware that he has been preaching all over the country the four acre model. So in fulfilment of his vision, the government through the ministry of agriculture has kicked off the process of the distribution of walking tractors to all the sub counties in Uganda including one big tractor for the district,” Obua said.
The principal of Amugu agro, Samuel Junga said he was grateful for the offer because a good number of students at the institute are undertaking agriculture.
“We have the greatest number of students taking agriculture and we have been lacking such kind of equipment because the number they have is overwhelming and cannot do anything good using hand hoes,” he adds.
Beside its usage of training students, he says, the tractor will also be used by the farming communities interested to hire at a minimal fee.
By Arao Denis
