Against the clamour for more land to be handed to commercial farmers to feed Uganda’s exploding population, Bruce Robertson strikes a cautionary note. The Cambridge-educated Mr Robertson has been working in agriculture in Uganda since 1995 and warns that the rush to create big farms could backfire.
“Uganda is a good country to invest in,” says Mr Robertson, a South African whose Gulu Agricultural Development Company works with 90,000 small farmers in northern and eastern Uganda. “But you have to invest wisely. The large agriculture schemes that I have seen have not been successful. It is best to invest in smallholder farmers’ production.”
