Grow Rice, Bananas Together to Fight Climate Change
They say desperate times call for desperate measures and for farmers in northern Uganda grappling with climate change, intercropping rice with bananas has helped a great deal, writes Tobbias Jolly Owiny.
Growing banana in rice fields and vice versa would probably have been dismissed as "unthinkable" by traditional farmers, but farmers who have dared to experiment with it only sing praises.
The government through ministry of agriculture has rallied farmers to embrace conservation farming that is already widely being practiced in some neighbouring countries such as Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania. They are growing banana, rice and coffee plants on the same soil to prepare for the new climate in the long term, and to grow the economy in the short term.
IG