Why Uganda needs GMOs

On May 21 2014 the Daily Monitor (a local Ugandan daily) carried a photograph of a woman in Karamoja climbing a tree to get wild fruits to feed her family. A local television station, the NTV, had a few weeks before filmed graves of people who had died of starvation in the Karamoja region. According to some press reports an estimated fifty people died in the dry period. The rains had failed and all the crops planted by the farmers in the region had dried up. Elsewhere in western Uganda a river had burst its banks due to heavy rains and the flooding had displaced thousands of people and caused untold damage including washing away a hospital and a few schools. Extreme weather incidences such as these in Uganda, manifested in the form of severe droughts and floods, have become more frequent in the recent years resulting in reduced national agricultural production.

DESTRUCTION OF UGANDA'S CROPS

The country, where the average woman produces 6.2 children (www.prb.org), has the fastest growing population globally after Niger and Mayotte. However its population is not growing as fast as its food production. Due to population pressure the farmers are working on smaller plots caused by land fragmentation. The soil is exhausted and due to financial limitations most farmers are unable to access high yielding seeds, fertilizers or to carry out irrigation. Some of the country’s main food crops such as bananas and cassava are under attack by pests and diseases and they are fast dying out, further threatening food security. Statistically Uganda is Africa’s leading banana producer and it is only next to India internationally. However, over the years, because of the Banana Bacterial Wilt (BBW), Uganda’s annual US $ 550 million worth production of bananas has reduced to US $ 350 million, according to Jerome Kubiriba, head of the Banana Research Project. Bananas are the main food crop in central and much of western Uganda. BBW, a pest caused disease, has proven incurable so far and the crop’s destruction continues to spread.

Cassava which is a staple food in Eastern and northern Uganda is under attack by the cassava mosaic disease (CMD) and the cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) The two diseases have reduced yields to less than half the potential (Uganda Bureau of Statistics). Maize production is declining due to increasing incidences of drought which have caused as much as 70 percent crop loss or more in some cases --- like in Karamoja as mentioned earlier in this article.

COFFEE ALSO UNDER ATTACK

The country’s main cash crop, Robusta coffee, has been attacked by the coffee wilt disease (CWD) which has reduced the crop stock by 55 percent according to Mr. Joseph Nkandu, Executive Director of the National Union of Coffee Agribusiness and Farm Enterprises (NUCAFE). Only a few years ago the country saw the arrival of the coffee twig borer (CTB) which according to the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) caused a reduction of 3.7 percent in the country’s total coffee export and a loss of US $18.1 million in 2011. The loss is a lot bigger in 2014 because of the increased severity of CTB infestation at between 6 percent and 12 percent across the country.

“HIDDEN HUNGER”

The country has other food related issues such as malnutrition. Thousands of its people suffer from what Harvest-Plus --- an anti-hunger global organization --- has described as ‘hidden hunger’. It is a form of malnutrition caused by the lack of micronutrients in the food eaten by most poor people. They eat staple foods such as potatoes, bananas, or cassava and fill their tummies yet they continue to suffer from malnutrition or hidden hunger, because such food crops don’t have the vital nutrients such as iron, Zink, and Vitamin A which the World Health Organization categorizes as the most limiting nutrients to healthy living. Without sufficient micronutrients in their diet, children’s growth slows down, their brains don’t develop properly, they may become blind, and generally they risk failure to develop strong immune systems. All people need to eat a well- balanced diet, comprising of a variety of food items such as fruits, vegetables, fish and animal products, to live healthy, productive lives but this has proven difficult to achieve especially among the poor people in Uganda. The country now has embarked on providing bio-fortified sweet potato vines and beans for the local small farmers to grow so as to reduce malnutrition among pregnant women and children. Using bio-technology scientists across the world have succeeded to fuse iron, Zink, and Vitamin A into the native food crops which have been eaten for generations. Bio-fortified sweet potatoes and beans have been easily accepted by the poor since they taste like the same beans and sweet potatoes that have been their main diet for ages.

IMAGINING UGANDA WITHOUT BANANAS, MAIZE, COFFEE OR CASSAVA

Uganda has often been described as having “lush green forests, abundant rainfall and a surfeit of other sources of water” but, unknown to most people, despite its unique agro-climatic conditions the country is very prone to crop and animal diseases and its agriculture is facing devastating challenges. The farmers’ crops are getting killed and wiped out. Sensitive to the challenges, Uganda has for close to fifteen years now been investing in biotechnological research and development including genetic engineering (or GM technology) in an effort to overcome the diseases that appear set to wipe out its major food and cash crops. It has trained scientists and built modern biotechnology laboratories besides providing funding for development of improved food crop varieties such as disease resistant cassava and banana as well as drought resistant maize and other technologies. Can anyone imagine Uganda without bananas, maize, cassava, or coffee?

LEGALISING BIOTECHNOLOGY

The laboratories are carrying out GM research on banana, maize, cotton and cassava. At Kawanda Research Station (near Kampala) genetic modification (GM) research is going on to develop bananas resistant to the devastating banana bacterial wilt and to produce bananas rich in vitamin A to curb malnutrition. Cotton is undergoing GM research at Serere (Eastern Uganda) and Kasese (Western Uganda) to achieve Ballworm resistance and herbicide resistance. The overall aims are to enhance cotton yields and quality of lint by limiting pest damage to cotton bolls and to improve weed management. Maize is undergoing GM research for drought tolerance and adoption to the hazards of global warming. Cassava is undergoing GM research at Namulonge (near Kampala) to come up with varieties resistant to cassava mosaic disease and cassava brown streak disease. These are efforts going on in Uganda to save Ugandan crops and carried out by Ugandans themselves. Some success has been registered with some of them but a lot of work is still yet to be done. The country already has a National Biotechnology and Bio-safety Policy (2008) and has also put in place a team of scientists and other stakeholders, the Uganda Biotechnology and Bio-safety Consortium (UBBC), whose mandate is to support and uphold safe and responsible use of biotechnology for national development. The government has also opened up a debate on the Biotechnology and Bio-safety Bill which is still ongoing. As a signatory to the Cartgena Protocol, Uganda is seeking to legalize and formalize its use of biotechnology products and wants a law in place before improved varieties from biotechnology can be passed on to the farmers for planting.

In the recent years the Uganda Coffee Research Institute at Kituuza in Mukono District identified some nine high yielding Robusta coffee varieties that are resistant to the devastating coffee wilt disease and so far some 2 million plantlets of the varieties have been produced by tissue culture technology at AGT Laboratories near Buloba along Kampala-Mityana Road.

Due to lack of correct information however there are some people who think that it is unsafe to eat GM foods, and that GMOs are a time bomb for Africa and Uganda in particular. The truth is that strict laws govern biotechnology products and they undergo a lot of assessment stipulated by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) let alone the UBBC, here in Uganda. No government worth its salt would invest money in research projects whose products would kill or maim its people. Africa must begin to trust science and to support scientific research for the benefit of its own people. Many refer to GMOs as manmade and prefer to eat “natural food” in order to be safe. But they travel in cars, trains, and airplanes which are manmade and they feel safe. The natural way to travel from Uganda to Cape Town would be to walk, but who still does that?

FOOD SECURITY THROUGH GMOS IS NECESSARY

Others think that GMOs are special crop seeds imported into the country to discourage our farmers from growing the traditional crops. The aim is totally different because the country is interested in ensuring food security for its people and to enhance agricultural productivity. Farming will be a lot cheaper when the farmers don’t always have to irrigate their maize or weed their crops. The people will be a lot healthier when they eat food enhanced with vital nutrients without having to struggle getting all the fruits and the other natural sources of the nutrients.

As a cotton growing country, Ugandans should do well to remember the words of the Right Honorable Paterson MP Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the United Kingdom, contained in a speech he made at Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, Herts on June 20 2013: “GM cotton provides farmers with in-built protection against pests which can otherwise halve yields. So the farmer benefits through insurance against losses and reduced input costs. There are environmental benefits through reduced insecticide use. The impacts of this are profound, particularly in developing countries where cotton tends to be grown. India went from being a net importer of cotton to a major exporter within a decade of GM cotton being approved in 2002. It is estimated that there has been a 216-fold increase in GM cotton uptake in India from 2002 to 2012. This translates to an enhanced farm income from GM cotton of some $12.6 billion for Indian farmers, coupled with a 24 percent increase in yield per acre and a 50 percent gain in cotton profit among smallholders. Simultaneously, the quantity of insecticides used to control cotton bollworm reduced by 96 percent from over 5,700 metric tons to as low as 222 metric tons of active ingredient in 2011.”

*Michael J Ssali is a coffee and banana farmer in Lwengo District, Southern Uganda. He is also a journalist. He writes a weekly column in the Daily Monitor titled: “Farmers Diary.”

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