The Agricultural show in the middle of the City-by Edward Magumba

The Agricultural show in the middle of the City-by Edward Magumba

On Saturday last week after our lessons at the harvest Leadership institute in Nalya Kampala, I passed by Namboole stadium for the Harvest Money Expo. 2019, its some sort of agriculture show, somehow similar to the one we normally have at the agricultural show in Jinja. I saw lots of people checking out exhibitions,lots of machinery good for mechanized agriculture. There was a Dutch village with lots to learn, the show seems to be sponsored by among others the Dutch Embassy in Kampala.

I was glad to see that many Ugandans including those based in urban areas,  are now waking up from sleeping and getting serous with agriculture.A whole continent called Africa with 54 countries cannot be running to a single Asian country called China begging for loans,grants,donations,etc when we have huge wealth laying idle below our incredibly fertile soils.

European countries like Netherlands, Denmark and others are thriving because of taking agriculture seriously inspite of the fact that some have one planting season, little arable land, soil not as fertile as that of Uganda.

In the year 2011 I went on mission trip to the nation of Israel, while there, I was shown land where Ugandan soil was reportedly dumped and mixed with infertile Israel soil.

Israelis are the people who constructed places like Bombo Barracks, Bugolobi flats and Entebbe Airport (old one), etc. As they worked here, they realized that our soils are very fertile. So, they packed the soils that they were excavating into sacks, loaded it on the planes and brought it to Israel. The place now looks fertile with alots of bananas grown on it. It’s reported that on addition to soil, Israelis also took  back banana suckers with them.
Israel and much of the Middle East are deserts, but amidst these deserts, these countries grow so much food to the extent that Israel is now the biggest banana producing country in the Middle East and the leading exporter to Europe.

Now in our life’s journey, if we are to make it well, we have to identify who we are; our strengths and weakness as individuals and also as a nation. Then capitalize on our strengths to move forward,John Maxwell talks about this in his 15 invaluable laws of growth, under the law of Awareness.One of our strength as Uganda is fertile soils, if we take advantage of this and engaged in commercial farming, it would probably reduce on our imports and boost our economy and bring smiles on our faces.

If I had any say in national politics or policy influence, I would probably recommend that schools put a lot of emphasis on teaching agricultural topics such as agro-produce, value addition, agro-processing, commercial farming,etc.

Blessings to all – Edward