Low fertilizer use worries experts

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Agricultural and soil experts have expressed concern over Uganda’s low fertilizer uptake,

Uganda’s soil fertility and nutritional value are reported to be gradually depreciating over the years, and according to the experts, this trend explains the shift in food-sourcing regions within the country, and eventually, it will lead to total extinction if nothing is done.

Available information indicates that on average Uganda uses between 1.8 to 3 kilograms of fertilizer per acre which is far below the average.

At the launch of the new bio-fertilizer which was engineered using Denmark technology, Prof. Julius Zaake, Uganda’s first soil professor, said that Uganda being a largely agricultural country, its soil is overworked and needs to be re-energized with massive fertilization which is not the case at the moment.

He adds that Uganda’s soil has deliberately been neglected, and it has not been prioritized, irrespective of the country’s 2006 commitment to use up to 50 kilograms per acre by 2015. According to Zaake, the set commercial agriculture export targets can hardly be achieved unless something is done about the ongoing soil degradation.

He adds that a lot of sensation to soil degradation needs to be done to equip Ugandans with the required soil use practices to protect this resource, increase production understand the causes of soil degradation, well as help Ugandans to understand that soil fertility is not permanent.

At an average rate of 1.8 to 3 kilograms per acre, makes Uganda one of the lowest fertilizer users in Africa, and Zaake says this makes agriculture unsustainable yet it employs up to 70 percent of Ugandans. He adds that this will also affect the country’s food security as yields will continue to decrease since even the current food hub is also affected.

“Most of our areas have what we call negative nutrient balance, meaning that what is gotten out if the soil is much more than what is put in, and what is amazing presently, is that where we are getting food these days which is the western region, it is the area with the greatest negative nutrient balance, so image what we are going to face in a few years, and we should not be alarmed as country because it is coming,” he explained.

Alex Otuti, the senior agricultural inspector in charge of Agro Chemicals in the Ministry of Agriculture, highlights that some parts of Uganda are so degraded to the level of needing to use the undesired synthetic fertilizer as the only option to jump-start it to the required conditions.

“Because of our challenging soil conditions now, for us to reach where we want, we have to jump-start the system, bring in synthetic fertilizer as we build on the organic matter level of the soil, to the limit that will allow us to move organically what is the most desired.” He emphasized.

According to Otuti, it is the large-scale plantations like tea and sugar estates that mainly use fertilizers, but the small-scale farmers barely do so, and that’s what brings the national average down to these alarming levels. And the organic nutrient imbalance, in the country, is very alarming.

Abdul Karim Dedya, the Country Director of Biofertilizer Africa Uganda Limited, and Rootzone Africa, said that it took up to 3 years of research to develop it, and it’s the first of the root zone technology fertilizer in the Ugandan market, and it is locally manufactured.

According to Dedya, transform is not just a fertilizer, it is a formula that improves the health of both the soil and the plant unlike what is currently on the market.

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