While representing the Speaker of Parliament and a delegation of MPs, Hon. Lyandro Komakech has urged the government of Uganda to benchmark with Netherlands to build capacity of farmers to transform the agricultural sector from the use of traditional methods to modern commercial Agricultural methods.
This followed visits to farming equipment companies and farms in Netherlands organized by the Uganda Netherlands Business Convention of 2019 under the Ugandan Community in the Netherlands on Thursday, 22 August 2019.
He recommended that the government should get involved into agreements with Dutch farm equipment manufacturers to train and supply farmers with modern farming equipment.
“We visited Jansen Poultry Equipment Firm which supplies equipment to over 80 countries and is willing to work with our government to help facilitate farmers who are in poultry especially at a local level,” said Komakech.
He added that they visited dairy farms which are highly advanced in production and sustainable even throughout adverse weather.
“One dairy farm of 100 cows employs a maximum of three people with the rest of it being robotized especially the use of robots in the milk extraction process resulting into one cow producing 75 litres of milk a day,” Komakech noted.
The MP further encouraged the government especially the Ministry of Agriculture sensitize farmers about commercial farming and create avenues for them to work together with the Dutch farmers.
“If Netherlands, a country six times smaller than Uganda is exporting 80 per cent of its agricultural products making it the second largest exporter in the world then Uganda has the potential to do better,” Komakech said.
The MPs also visited medical equipment manufacturing companies which included the Amsterdam Skills Centre that focuses on training surgeons and Delft Imaging Systems that produces imaging and X-ray machines.
The companies expressed interest in offering capacity support to the Ministry of Health for example, Delft Imaging has supplied five portable X-ray imaging machines that are yet to be delivered.
The MPs condoned the move by the Ministry of Health and encouraged more partnerships in the health sector especially in training health personnel in Uganda.