Ugandan farmers save harvest with new storage systems

In the eastern part of Uganda, Merab Nabirye a small-scale farmer, is living her dream.

Growing staple foods like maize and beans to feed her family, farming appears to be all she has.

Nabirye is one of many farmers using new food storage methods that has proven largely beneficial, a positive deviation from what it used to be in the past. “Before we were given this knowledge, our farming was not very profitable. We would harvest sporadically and dry our produce on bare soil because we did not have tarpaulins. It cost us a lot of yields; we shared it with rats, and all sorts of insects. But since we learned these methods, there has been a difference,” she says.

In the past, she had been losing a large part of her harvest through inefficient storage practices. Over 16,000 farmers have so far benefited from the UN’s World Food Programme training.