WAKISO – Over 70,000 youths are currently engaged in the pulse value chain, courtesy of Gudie Leisure Farm (GLF) in its efforts to eradicate poverty and unemployment amongst the youths.
Speaking to the press at the Pulses Cottage Industry Symposium on Monday, Prof. Gudula Naiga Basaza, Founder and Managing Director – GLF noted that the pulses value chains play a central role in food and nutrition security as well as in revenue generation for the country.
She revealed that the symposium targeted youth from 26 districts who were trained before they went back and trained colleagues to make a network of 70,000 youth who are involved in the soybean value chain.
“…pulses play a big role in addressing the youth unemployment problem which is undoubtedly one of the most biting issues for the country today.”
The symposium was attended by different stakeholders including the National Agriculture Research Organization (NARO), Ministry of Agriculture, Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS), private sector, among others who shed more light to the youth on key factors of becoming established farming players.
Prof. Gudula is optimistic the symposium would highlight several profitable enterprises under different pulses value chains which can be established and leveraged to address several issues such as unemployment and to transform the economy and livelihoods of the young people.
“In the symposium, we’ve been able to tease out the economic potential of soya bean as a food, a food for health as a feed for the animals that has the highest content of protein that is desired when we are raising animals, but also looking at the other opportunities within other industries like biofuels, industries of cosmetics that are options that our youth can explore to be able to participate in the soybean value chain,” she said.
Prof. Gudula commended the youths for actively engaging in agriculture today compared to years ago.
“If I were to compare 10 years ago, agriculture was not always exciting for the youth but as we talked today, the youth have seen an opportunity within agriculture and especially those who have embraced value chain linkage.”
Dr. Pamela Paparu, head of programme for legumes at NARO, Namulonge said that they have generated a lot of technologies that answer market demand – tasking the youth to leverage the opportunity.
“So we are working on producing or giving out varieties that are of industrial quality that can be used for value addition. For the beans, we have identified a very good bean variety for canning and then we have other bean varieties two or more that are very good for pre-cooking. They can be processed in a cooked form, dried and then sold in the supermarket so that the cooking time is reduced.”
“Also now we focus on the good variety that is high yielding. We now introduced early maturity varieties because of the climatic changes…. if you have a crop that yields or matures sooner, you’re better off maybe you will not be caught by the drought,” she added.
