SOUTH SUDAN REFUGEES IN NORTHERN UGANDA EMBRACE NEW FARMING TECHNIQUES TO SUPPLEMENT MEAGRE FOOD RATIONS

A cassava farm belonging to one of the refugee in Palorinya Settlement, Obongi District. Photo by Samson Ganiko.

By Samson Ganiko

Moyo

To improve farming in the Palorinya refugee settlement, different partners of local and international organizations have come up with ways of building group farming.

Beatrice Karibe, working with “For Africa,” one of the aid agencies operating in West Nile says that keeping the farmers in groups helps to harness their different potentials. 

The groups have 30 members each whom the organization helps by inducting them on good agronomic practices and farm management. “We teach them how to manage their farm from the time you dig your land up to the time of harvest when the sun heat is strong, we tell them to space the plants at a reasonable distance and avoid crowding the crops. During the rainy season we also tell them to create water channels,” explained Karibe.

Her organization is one of the many aid agencies responding to the negative impact of unpredictable weather patterns in the refugee settlements in West Nile and Uganda.

Candia Benedetti Kodili, a refugee farmer and opinion leader in Moyo says that worldwide refugees and displaced persons have faced the impact of climate change, describing it as a monster that they have to learn to live with.

“So that means we need to adopt because the population is shooting and yet the land is small and we need the land to be productive. Unfortunately, climate change is something we have no control over. When it rains it rains too much and when it shines it shines too hard,” he lamented.

Kodili asserted that one of the ways through which they can adapt to some of those changes is by adopting kitchen gardens. She says these are small gardens that you put in your backyard; it can even be as small as three meters by two meters.

“In this kitchen garden you can plant vegetables, so what happens there even in the dry season is that instead of pouring down the water to wash utensils, you pour in the kitchen garden. The wastewater will work as a form of irrigation, then there you can get vegetables for your children to eat to have a balanced diet,” explained Kodili.

She added that the other ways that they can also do climate-smart farming in the settlement areas is by people forming groups and doing farming collectively.

Following the drop in the funding options for persons of concern in Uganda’s refugee settlement areas, there has been gradual cuts to the food rations given to the refugees.

The most recent cuts were implemented in 2022 which saw a substantial drop to about 40% of essential food stuff given to the refugees by the World Food Program.

This has forced the refugee community to venture out into farming activities in hopes of attaining better livelihoods, but less land, climatic changes, and lack of resources stand as a huge stumbling block.

We visited palorinya refugee settlement found in Obongi District, West Nile sub-region which is home to approximately 124,632 persons of concern according to a report by UNHCR in June 2023 of whom the majority are from South Sudan.

The harsh climate tends to heat up to 40°c in the dry season and drop to 15°c in the wet season. Seeing this, to curb food shortage, the refugee community has ventured into farming.

Betty Kojo, a resident of Belameling Village Zone 1 in this settlement laments the disaster that has come with the harsh weather conditions. She says that too much rains destroy crops and too much sunshine burns the field which in turn reduces production.

“You see, this is how we are suffering at the settlement. I cultivated maize in the first season but unfortunately, the dry spell affected everything at least I harvested a small quantity of maize. Then during the second season, I cultivated cowpeas, sorghum, and heaped potatoes, unfortunately, the heavy rains and floods swallowed everything as you can see everything is now in water,” complained Kojo.

She added that the food ration they receive is so small that it can’t sustain them for the whole month and that is making refugee women go to the bush to collect firewood to sell in order to buy food.

Stella Sophie a mother of three in Keguru Unit A zone says, to fend for her family, farming was the only option. But with the little land and harsh weather conditions especially in dry seasons, she could not do any meaningful farming.

“Getting land is very expensive at the list every year, you need to rent land, half an acre is at UGX.100,000, I can’t afford because when the crop has not grown well, I may not go back again to beg the owner of the land to reuse it,” she said.

Stella on sack planting
“You know like for us here we were only given 30 by 30 plots which may not even make us cultivate much of the crop, so the only thing that we do, we were taught how to use sacks for planting other crops like tomatoes, cabbages, Sukuma wiki and many other vegetables that can help to maintain us here,” she narrated.

She elaborated that the kitchen gardens have come in handy in helping them get vegetables and avoid expenses of having to buy food from the local markets.
“After planting the crops in the sack, we water them, during even dry season we water so that it will not get dry and that’s what is helping us during the dry season at least not to go and buy every day because getting money is also a problem in the camp.”

The Assistant Settlement Commandant, Muwerega Julius John, has further expressed how efforts are being put in place to improve farm production in the area.
As a requirement by the government and even by the Food and Agriculture Organization to address one of the sustainable development goals, all refugee settlements are trying to embrace the climate smart Agriculture.

They do this by promoting drought-resilient crop varieties such as sorghum, maize, cassava potatoes, and cowpeas.

Another strong intervention has been the establishment of solar water pumping systems in the settlement to support irrigation farming among the refugees and host communities.

“By embracing solar irrigation, we believe we can do much better in improving on people standers and on improving food security in Palorinya settlement,” Mwerenga said.
 
The production of this story was supported by Info Nile in partnership with Palladium under the climate smart agriculture reporting project.