President Museveni speech during labour day celebrations on the 1st May at the national grounds in Kololo mentioned that the current soaring food prices in the world are a blessing for the country. His reasoning was that instead of people spending time talking and debating non-issues, they should instead spend more time in their gardens producing more food. He further reasons that this is an opportunity for food producers to increase on their investments and thus fetch higher returns now that there is a growing demand for more food in the whole world.

His talk focusing more on public servants who can still afford a meal forgetting that this is both a national crisis affecting the rural and poor majority people living on less than a dollar a day. These poor in the villages can grow at least their own little food but currently are greatly struggling to find that piece of soap to wash their clothe clean, sugar for a cup of coffee, salt, paraffin for their lamp.

Its these same rural people growing food which is transported to urban areas to feed the town folks and now that the food yields are low, they probably, cannot invest more to feed the growing world population. The end result, farming is going to shift from being a poor man’s trade to that of a rich man and without good government policies, do not expect the food prices to come down from their current rates. A rich man would be more interested in huge profit margins than practicing farming as a means of survival.

Probably, rising food prices are a blessing but for the privileged few.

Also read