Food and economic development

Eastern Africa Journal of Rural Development, 2004

This study presents findings of a study on household food security in Uganda. The study finds that during the first period (July-December 1997), 48 percent of households in Uganda were food secure and 52% food insecure. During the second period (January-June 1998), 59 percent of households in Uganda were food secure, while 41 percent were food insecure. The study established that food security varies from one season to the next, depending mainly on the weather pattern. Household food security also varies across regions, agro-ecological zones and districts. The western region was found to be food secure in both periods. The central region was food insecure in the first season, but food secure in the second season. The situation in the eastern region was about the same, roughly half the population were food insecure in both seasons. The northern region had 51 percent of the population food insecure in the first season, but that figure rose to 74% during January-June 1998. Overall, the northern region was the most food insecure. In general, the three main causes of household food insecurity in both periods were inadequate rainfall, pests and diseases, and excessive rain, in that order. The incidence of pests and diseases is likely to be influenced by the weather fluctuations. The study findings suggest that in selecting priority intervention areas, the Plan for Modernization of Agriculture should consider agricultural extension, rural credit and access to improved technologies as the three most important areas.

Nutrition, 2002

AFRICAN JOURNAL OF FOOD, AGRICULTURE, NUTRITION AND DEVELOPMENT, 2017

As Millions of people's lives become considered to have improved due to concerted global, regional, national and local efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the new perspective apparently focuses on global development agenda. By 2015, research and development evaluations suggested that substantial MDG targets had already been met in areas of reducing poverty, increasing access to improved drinking water sources, improving the lives of slum dwellers and achieving gender parity in primary school. Additional targets, such as access to technologies, reduction of average tariffs, debt relief, and growing political participation by women, showed great progress.

Thesis, 2019

Achieving food and nutrition security is among the goals of many public-private partnerships in Uganda. This study examined the impacts of Nutrition Education Centers’ (NECs) training programs on food and nutrition security in Kamuli, Uganda. Using a comparative approach, the study explored the relationship between participants’ affiliation with NECs, dimensions and quality of their participation, as well as their household characteristics, and food and nutrition security. The study was based on survey of 454 households with 606 children aged 0-59 months from two sub-counties. Anthropometric measures were also taken of caretakers, children, which were transformed into Z-score using WHO-Anthro. Respondents were categorized into NEC participants (NEC and Non-NEC clients) and Non-participants and data were analyzed using IBM-SPSS 24. Results showed that Non-NEC clients were more food secure and had better dietary diversity than NEC clients and Non-participants, however, their caloric intake was not higher than the former. Food security was also influenced by household’s participation in programs, availability of livestock, land acreage owned, WASH facilities conditions, meals eaten during food scarcity, time taken to collect water, membership of burials and festival groups, and days of illness of adult males. For nutrition security, NEC clients and Non-participants mothers had better health than Non-NEC clients. However, the former had more underweight mothers than the two groups. Incidence of underweight was associated with education and age at first pregnancy. Children of Non-participants and NEC clients had higher cases of stunting and underweight than Non-NEC. Wasting significantly affected NEC and Non-NEC than Non-participants. Recommendations for improving the program include participatory planning involving community, cultural and government officials in design of activities, decision making to strengthen implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Expanding microfinance project to increase livestock distribution and continue to empower households in records keeping involving production. Help farmers access high value staple crops to increase food production and incomes, in addition to encouraging clients to have vegetable gardens. Collaborating with Water User Committees, district health, and development departments to improve monitoring households’ WASH facilities. Collaboration with health workers, Village Health Trainers to educate and encourage households to adopt improved maternity practices and monitoring of children

Food access is an important element of food security that has since long been a major concern of rural households. One intervention to improve food access has been increased promotion of market production in the hope that households will get increased income and access to food through the market rather than through self-sufficiency characteristic of subsistence production. We examine the effect of market production on household food consumption using a case of rice in western Uganda, where rice is largely a cash crop. Our analysis is based on propensity score matching and instrumental variable approach using survey data collected from 1137 rural households. We find evidence of negative significant effects of market production on calorie consumption; More commercialized households are more likely to consume less than the required calories per adult equivalent per day. This implies that the substitution effects due to higher shadow prices of food outweigh the income effects of additional crop sales. On the contrary, we find positive significant effects on household dietary diversity. We suggest a mixed approach combining policies targeted at market production as well as production for own consumption, and nutrition sensitization.

2012

First of all, I praise and honor the Almighty God. To the Economics and Social Sciences Department at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Piacenza), thanks for the scholarship that offered me such a wonderful opportunity to pursue a PhD in Quantitative Models for Policy Analysis (QMPA). The support received from the Dean of the Economics Faculty, Prof.

2018

This paper provides an overview of existing agricultural policies in Uganda and how they address the key AgriFose2030 target groups that include; smallholder farmers, women and youth. One of the main policies in Uganda’s agricultural sector is the National Agriculture Policy (NAP) which deals with commercialization of smallholder agriculture through accessibility of financial services such as, loans. However, NAP lacks a consistent and implementation framework thereby hindering proper transformation and increase of agricultural production in the sector. The Agriculture Sector Strategic Plan (ASSP) of 2015/16 to 2019/20 lays out the priorities and interventions that are crucial to transforming smallholder farmers into commercial farmers. The five year strategy focuses on improving the accessibility of critical farm inputs such as, fertilizers as wells value addition and markets for the agricultural produce. However, the strategy is constrained by unfavorable conditions for agricultur...