115 Purchasing Amfri Farms operates eight farms and works with an additional 700 small farmers Is organic agriculture widespread in Uganda Yes I would say that Uganda is one of the leading nations for organic farming Ugan da was one of the first countries to adopt the principles of organic agriculture That was quite a while ago so our system is better developed than that of other East African countries Why is that If you look at Uganda you ll notice that we don t have very many large farming oper ations Traditional small farms are more common in our culture and the princi ples of organic farming dovetail very nice ly with the values of the traditional farm er This was the reason why the transition to organic cultivation went so well and so quickly Does this also mean that residues are not a big problem Exactly For example in Kenya the conver sion time of a conventional farm to organic agriculture is at least three years because the farmers simply use too many pesti cides In Uganda the problem of pesticides tends to be much less serious Most of the farmers simply didn t have enough money to buy pesticides or chemical fertilisers So the risk of residues is not very high Lilian Anguparu Managing Director of Amfri Farms A CUP OF TEA WITH Are there other challenges facing organic farming in Uganda There are indeed some factors that are prob lematic for the production of organic food in Uganda This is because the government does not see organic agriculture as important So there is not very much support in mitigating risks which can become a problem when it comes to selling the products And a problem for their export to the EU In 2018 you founded Eco Terra Alliance Uganda ETAU from Amfri Farms What is that It s a network that aims to provide training to farmers in a variety of areas Its mission is pri marily to raise awareness and support for or ganic farming in Uganda There was once an organisation called the National Organic Move ment of Uganda Unfortunately it didn t work the way we had hoped it would It ended bad ly and there were even some cases of embez zlement In the end the organisation broke up and left many people in the organic business in the lurch Something new was urgently need ed someone to tackle current problems and help advance the organic sector in Uganda We noticed that a lot of women work at Amfri Farms especially in leadership positions I can t say much about that I don t really know how it happened That s just the way it is We hold interviews and the women have simply been the best candidates

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