Ugandan farmers focus on producing more financially profitable crops like maize, beans, bananas and potatoes, as well as others. However, this means that so called ‘orphan’ or traditional food crops are disappearing, and for some smallholder farmers they could in fact be better positioned to grow these instead.
There are banana varieties like the nakabululu whose production is declining because they are naturally smaller and less marketable than the bigger ones like kibuzi.
Yet many banana consumers know that nakabululu is tastier than kibuzi. A farmer prefers to grow a banana variety that will produce big, easily marketable bunches. Farming is commercialised and it is losing some of its cultural African heritage aspects and values.
Better position
Modern crop production methods such as the use of herbicides and heavy machines do not favour the production of crops such as the kassukussuku mushroom, which was grown by previous generations and weeded by hand.
Yet smallholder farmers who use simple tools like hoes are in a better position to produce these ‘orphan’ crops using traditional knowledge, which has been passed on from one generation to another.
Many of the so-called orphaned crops are also associated with African cultural practices. Some crops like the kibaala type of mushroom were associated with special meals cooked and eaten at traditional functions like celebrating the birth of twins or when a bride serves her first cooked meal to her husband.
Source: Fresh Plaza