It is the region’s food crop agriculture, which is dominated by semi-subsistence smallholder farmers, that presents the most difficult challenges for agricultural modernisation. In Uganda, food crop production has grown at an average rate of only 0.4 percent per annum over the last 10 years, which is far below the population growth rate of 3.2 percent per annum.
Why is productivity so low in the food crop sector across East Africa? The main reason is that smallholder food crop farmers are trapped in a vicious circle which links their poverty and lack of resources to low agricultural productivity and thus to low incomes.