We are encouraging our farmers, our cattle keepers, to start looking at agriculture in a different way, because they are selling only when they want money for school fees, someone is sick in the home. But now we want to introduce selling for cash and making our beef export a big industry.
We are going to introduce animals that will grow fast. So that within six months an animal weighs 400 kilograms.
Not ours here which take five and a half years and weigh only 150 kilograms.
We are going to introduce embryos and push for proper slaughter animals so that we can get more cash for our people.
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These remarks were made by Hon. Joy Kabatsi on 29th August 2016 during the Uganda Joint Agricultural Sector Annual Review (JASAR) that was held at Speke Resort Munyonyo in Kampala in Uganda.
One of the events at the JASAR was a press conference among which the panellists were the Minister of Ministry of Agriculture Animal Industries and Fisheries (MAAIF) – Hon. Vincent Bamulangaki Sempijja, Hon. Syda Bbumba, Hon Kabatsi, Other senior government officials – including heads of directorates within MAAIF, and Mr. Charles Owach of Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO Uganda) who represented Government of Uganda (GOU) ‘Development Partners’.
Hon. Kabatsi’s remarks were in response to the following three questions which journalists asked the panellists:
- Minister in your speech you mentioned that you are looking at agriculture contributing four billion dollars. You mention a list of crops, am wondering, you did not say what you are going to do. Are you going to provide seeds?
- I would like the Minister to give me specific interventions in terms of innovations that he thinks can mitigate the scarcity of jobs in this country at present.
- You mentioned the 4 billion dollars, but there is a concern right now about horticultural products. That the Ministry of Agriculture has only two inspectors and the 50 plus exporters are not having their products verified in a timely manner. What is the position of the Ministry ahead of the EU Review?
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2 responses to “GOU to import exotic animals for beef”
My fear is that government agents will eventually grow skeptical of their people’s capacity to deliver this pipe dream and so the agents will justify landgrabbing in order to produce beef industrially. The whole process will bring all sorts of strange investors here. Once again we and our people will be declared backward because we cannot produce enough to feed the industrial monster.r
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Yes, Richard that has crossed my mind. And at one of the discussions it was stated quite deliberately. In addition to the Ministers remarks: “We are interested in people with larger chunks of land… Government of Uganda is planning to mechanise. With large chunks of land certainly you have to use mechanisation…Only 500 people with 500 acres each if they decided to go into maize, they will produce enough maize for this country.” Read more https://nowaraga.wordpress.com/2016/09/01/maaif-plans-export-oriented-large-scale-commercial-agriculture/
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