Government is promoting quick-maturing and drought-tolerant crop varieties and expanding irrigation as changing weather patterns cut into farm yields, a senior agriculture ministry official has said.
Dr Mary Teddy Asio, assistant commissioner in charge of seed inspection and certification at the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries, said global warming was already affecting farming and that farmers needed varieties able to mature before the rains run out.
"All of us know about global warming, it is real and so the climate has changed. So we have to look for resilient varieties," she said.
Dr Asio was speaking at the 2026 Central Region Agribusiness Expo, co-hosted by the Eastern Africa Grain Council (EAGC) and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) at IITA's Sendusu station in Namulonge, Wakiso District. The two-day expo, held under the theme "Promoting Resilient Food Systems for Improved Household Incomes and Food Security", closed on Saturday.
She represented Dr Paul Mwambu, the commissioner for crop inspection and certification.
Dr Asio said IITA and the National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO) had developed varieties of maize, millet and sorghum tested to yield with little rain or to mature early, and that the ministry was promoting them under its climate-smart agriculture programme.
"A lot of them have been given to Karamoja because they mature quickly and they mature with little water," she said.
On water for production, Dr Asio said the ministry was developing a national irrigation project that would be rolled out across the country if the Ministry of Finance provided funding.
Under earlier small-scale irrigation schemes, she said, farmers paid 20 per cent of the cost of irrigation equipment while the government covered 80 per cent. She acknowledged that the programme had not reached every district but said farmers in the districts covered had benefited.
She said the World Bank-funded Uganda Climate Smart project was also supplying irrigation systems to farmers free of charge.
"We are trying to roll out irrigation because there is no other option at the moment with the state that we are now," she said.
Asked how farmers were being protected as new hybrid and drought-tolerant seed entered the market, Dr Asio said the country's seed and plant variety law and its regulations governed all seed matters through the Uganda National Seed Certification Service.
She said one regulation made certification mandatory for different varieties, while a second provided for quality declared seed, a more relaxed system under which farmers select seed they judge to be good based on disease resistance and yield. She added that farmers were also being allowed to keep using older varieties they had found to withstand pests, diseases and drought.
On costs, Dr Asio said machinery such as tractors remained out of reach for many small-scale farmers, which was why the government encouraged them to work in groups. She said the ministry was asking financial institutions to lend to farmers with an adequate grace period, but that farmers should also be prepared to invest in fertilisers, pesticides and quality seed.
"If you want a good thing you must invest," she said.
She said public-private partnerships had worked best in easing access to credit, citing cases where development partners provided collateral on behalf of farmers or input suppliers extended credit to be repaid after harvest. She described interest rates of 12 per cent as still very high but said rates were set by market forces and lenders, adding that government ministries were in talks with financial institutions.
George Mahuku, IITA's country representative for Uganda, said the institute's climate work included breeding, biochar, biodiversity, soil fertility management and irrigation, aimed at helping farmers cope with higher temperatures, erratic rainfall and the disease pressure that comes with them.
He said IITA focuses mainly on cassava, banana and soybean in Uganda, with some work on maize, including the development with NARO of a biological control product against aflatoxin. He said the product, Aflasafe, had been handed over to NARO Holdings Limited to take to market.
Mahuku said the partnership with EAGC was meant to close a gap researchers faced in getting innovations to farmers. "As researchers, we are very good at what we do, but we do not always know how to scale those innovations out to the people who need them," he said.
Paul Ochuna, EAGC's country programmes manager and Uganda country leader, said the expo was one of the council's flagship platforms for linking smallholder farmers with seed producers, fertiliser and herbicide suppliers and mechanisation companies.
At IITA's banana section, Dr Violet Akech, a molecular breeder at the station, said breeders were introducing pest and disease resistance and drought tolerance into local varieties such as Nakitembe and Mpologoma rather than replacing them.
"They are not new things, it is just simply what the farmer is already growing," Dr Akech said of the improved hybrids.
She said the institute also conserves Uganda's indigenous banana varieties in field collections and in test tubes in its laboratory.
According to the organisers' concept note, the expo targeted 5,000 farmers from the Central Region and districts including Iganga, Jinja and Mubende, and 55 exhibitors, with crop demonstration plots focused on drought-tolerant varieties.