The plan for Modernization of Agriculture (PMA) is a holistic, strategic framework for eradicating poverty through multi-sectional interventions enabling the people to improve their livelihoods in a sustainable manner. It is an outcome-focused set of principles upon which sectional and inter-sectoral policies and investment plans can be developed at both the central and local Government levels. The PMA is part of the Government of Uganda's broader strategy of poverty eradication contained in the poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) of 1997 which has just been revised and updated this year. The revised PEAP has 4 main goals: creating a framework for economic growth and structural transformation; ensuring good governance and security; directly increasing the ability of poor to raise incomes; and directly increasing the quality of life of the poor. Modernizing agriculture will contribute to increasing incomes of the poor by raising farm productivity, increasing the share of agricultural production that is marketed, and creating on-farm and off-farm employment.
 
The Vision

Agricultural transformation in Uganda will lead to "poverty eradication through a profitable, competitive, sustainable and dynamic agricultural and agro-industrial sector".

The Mission

In order to achieve the vision and its objectives, the mission of the PMA is eradicating poverty by "transforming subsistence agriculture to commercial agriculture". Read more

Objectives

The PMA is a poverty focused framework of principles whose main objectives are to:

• increase incomes and improve the quality of life of poor subsistence farmers through increased productivity and increased share of marketed production;
• improve household food security through the market rather than emphasizing self sufficiency;
• provide gainful employment through the secondary benefits of PMA implementation such as agro-processing factories and services;
• promote sustainable use and management of natural resources by developing a land use and management policy and promotion of environmentally friendly technologies.

Strategies

The broad strategies for achieving the PMA objectives are to:

• Making poverty eradication the overriding objective of agricultural development;
• Deepening decentralization to lower levels of Local Governments for efficient service delivery;
• Removing direct involvement of government in commercial aspects of agriculture and promoting the role of the private sector;
• Supporting the dissemination adoption of productive enhancing technologies.
• Guaranteeing food security through the market and improved incomes, thereby allowing households to specialize, rather than through household self sufficiency;
• Ensuring that all intervention programmes are gender focused and gender responsive;
• Promoting a two-way planning and budgeting process by empowering local governments and enabling them to influence public policy and allocate resources to alleviate location specific constraints in a non-sector manner;
• Ensuring coordination of the multi-sector interventions to remove any constraints to agricultural modernisation.

The interventions of the PMA seek to increase the productivity of factors of production in agriculture, to ensure food security, to create gainful employment, to increase incomes, and to improve the quality of life of those engaged in the agriculture sector. The PMA identifies seven areas of intervention into which public investments will be built.

Target Beneficiaries

The main target beneficiaries of the PMA interventions are the subsistence farmers who constitute the majority of the poor in rural areas, in actual fact, the PMA will benefit all categories of farmers in Uganda,
Priority Areas

The priority area for Government action under the PMA was derived from the perspectives of farmers as generated existing studies and from consultations during the PMA process. For the agricultural sector to be engine for economic growth and poverty eradication in Uganda, institutional reforms and strengthening processes were to be undertaken immediately. Sector institutions were to review, update, and/or formulate policies and regulations that would guide the activities of the sector. Research and extension policies were to be formulated and harmonized with the PMA principles and objectives, and with the existing policy environment of decentralization, Privatization and liberalization. Grades and standards for service delivery, for chemicals, seeds, fertilizers/and human private sectors, thereby reducing transactions costs and providing opportunity for increased efficiency and effectiveness.