Food and Agriculture Organization of the United NationsFood and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Rice-fish farming in the Land of Milk and Honey


South-South Cooperation is revolutionizing agriculture in Uganda

30/01/2025

Anastasia Mwamula roots weeds from her quarter-of-an-acre paddy field barefoot. It’s a back-breaking exercise. But, at 51 years of age and with eight children to feed, she’s gotten used to hard work.

Every morning, Anastasia and her 58-year-old husband, Zakaria Wapali, leave their red-brick home on the edge of a tiny village known as Scheme View to tend to this and other crops on their 15-acre field, a two-kilometre walk away. There, they grow cabbage, bananas, mangoes, maize, cassava, tomatoes and—of course—rice.

That’s because Anastasia and Zakaria hail from Butaleja, a farming district that could easily be described as “the rice basket of Uganda.”

Rice production in Butaleja was limited until the 1970s when a major irrigation scheme helped water the fields and compensate for shortages during the dry season. Today, most of the district’s farmers rely on rice for their livelihood.

For years, Anastasia struggled with her rice yields. That is, until May 2024, when she met experts dispatched by Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the People’s Republic of China to Uganda as part of a South-South Cooperation project implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in collaboration with the Governments of China and Uganda.

Rice experts from China, together with their Ugandan counterparts, taught her essential techniques, such as improving the rice paddy's drainage and spacing seedlings properly. The results have been spectacular. Before, she harvested 100 kilograms of rice from her quarter of an acre paddy. Now it’s closer to 400 kilograms.

Taihua Chen, the project’s aquaculture expert, was also able to assist with another ambition of hers – integrating rice production with fish farming – known as rice-fish culture.

Back in 2005, Anastasia was intrigued by a programme on the radio that talked about the ancient Chinese tradition of breeding fish in flooded paddy fields. The idea behind this combination is that rice paddies offer protection and organic food for the fish, while the fish soften the soil and provide nutrients and oxygen for the rice crop. By feeding on insects and weeds, the fish also help maintain a perfect ecological balance that improves biodiversity without resorting to harmful pesticides.

Anastasia had wanted to try this practice but had been struggling with her shoal of catfish and native Nile Tilapia fish, which she kept in a pond next to her rice paddy.

“In the beginning, I had challenges. I had no experience with fish. Feeding them was very expensive, and I didn't know how. The water wasn’t sufficient, and the fish started dying," she says.

Chen showed her how to use readily available natural feed, such as snails and broken-up cabbage leaves, allowing her to use the money saved to buy more fish. She has since doubled her fish production to more than 100 kilograms. The next step involves creating that synergic relationship in her farm by introducing the fish into the rice paddy.

Anastasia says the neighbours often ask her why she’s not buying new clothes with her newfound income.

She says she’d rather use the money to pay for the children's education. Asked whether there’s anything she’d like for herself, she says with a blush, “I’d like to change my hairstyle, so that I can look better.”

Longstanding ties

Uganda has a longstanding friendship and commercial ties with China. The Doho irrigation scheme in Butaleja, for example, was established by the Ugandan government in 1976 with help from the Chinese government.

China also has much to share with Uganda about feeding a growing population. Not long ago, large swathes of Asia faced hunger levels similar to those afflicting Africa today.

The two countries, therefore, seemed like a natural fit for FAO’s South-South Cooperation programme, which offers a broad framework for collaboration among developing countries based on the concept of solidarity.

The aim of the FAO-China-Uganda South-South Cooperation (SSC) project is to increase the productivity of Ugandan farmers and help them produce more with less by providing them with training, technology and technical assistance across a wide range of areas, from crop production and animal husbandry to aquaculture and sericulture. The project is also designed to help farmers bring their products to market through value chain development and post-harvest handling.

This SSC project is now the longest-running project under the FAO-China South-South Cooperation Programme, with China loaning a total of 56 agricultural experts to Uganda since 2012.

Among them is Zhong Ping Luo, a 59-year-old veteran rice expert who has been training farmers in Uganda for the last five years. He says his personal memories of growing up in a less prosperous China have been a factor motivating his work, of which he is deeply proud.

“I remember food rations and going hungry sometimes,” Zhong Ping says. He says that this is part of what inspired him to come to Uganda— to contribute to efforts ensuring everyone has enough food to eat.

Uganda, a landlocked country, is nonetheless incredibly green, blessed with fertile land and plenty of water, thanks to Lake Victoria, the River Nile and two rainy seasons per year, earning it the sobriquet “The Pearl of Africa.”

Its luscious western regions, rich in cattle and home to some of the last remaining mountain gorillas, are often referred to as “the Land of Milk and Honey.”

Mango, jackfruit and banana trees line its roads, while tea and coffee plantations adorn its hills.

Despite making great economic strides in recent decades, poverty persists in Uganda, impacting about 20 percent of the country’s population, especially in rural areas, where most of the nearly 50 million people live.

Agriculture remains the backbone of livelihoods for most Ugandans, presenting a significant opportunity to enhance productivity through access to modern equipment and improved know-how.

“Uganda is an agricultural country,” says the country’s Vice President, Jessica Alupo. “When we talk about enhancing technology, enhancing capacity building, training farmers, you are transforming these farmers from subsistence farmers to commercial farmers."

Vice President Alupo says the SSC project is very important to Uganda and has contributed to “economic growth and poverty reduction in our country."

A testament to her government’s commitment is the substantial funding (USD 9.6 million) it is providing to the project’s third and current phase, in addition to USD 3 million from China.

Boosting yields with hybrid rice

The roads around Anastasia and Zakaria’s home are bumpy and mostly made of dirt, lined with banana, coconut and mango trees. Rustic homes dotted along the route display the region’s typical Simbas, tiny round bricks-and-mud huts with straw roofs where juvenile sons go to stay until they leave the family home to get married. Children play freely outside. Goats, chickens and dogs can be seen roaming the village.

Butaleja is Uganda’s traditional rice-growing region, and much of this tradition has remained unchanged.

There are still some farmers using oxen to plough their fields, and the district’s irrigation system may have improved dramatically since the 1970s, but some productive methods haven’t changed for millennia.

Heading east, towards the border with Kenya, lives Robert Sagula, a 69-year-old rice farmer from Nabiganda.

Robert is one of the area’s most experienced rice farmers. He started farming right after school and took over the family farm when his father passed away in 1986. He was one of the first to take up rice farming when the crop was revived in the 1970s.

Like thousands of other rice farmers, he has also received expert training as part of the SSC project. He has learned transplanting techniques, how to prepare the land with proper digging and fertilization, the appropriate spacing between plants to maximize their growth potential and a better understanding of the right time to harvest.

This kind of advice has already helped local farmers increase the yields of traditional rice varieties.

Part of the project involves the promotion of a high-yielding, drought-resistant hybrid rice variety created in China.

Droughts are becoming more frequent, and landslides are a growing source of alarm around Mount Elgon, a 3 000-metre extinct volcano that towers in the background. Uganda needs crops that can better adapt to a changing climate.

While the seeds of this hybrid rice are expensive, there are additional advantages when compared to traditional varieties. It matures in 125 days, instead of the usual six months, more than doubles yields (from 1.6 to 4 tonnes per hectare) and offers an aroma that is desired by many. As a result, it can fetch as much as 4 000 Ugandan shillings per kilogram, rather than the average price which is about half this amount.

Robert has fully embraced the new variety in his fields.

"It’s simple. With the old variety, I could get 500 kilograms per acre. Now I get over 2 000 kilograms per acre."

Robert believes hybrid rice can help chase hunger out of Uganda and turn the country into a food basket for a sizeable chunk of the continent.

“We have very good weather and water. So, we have the potential to feed the whole of East and Central Africa,” he says while tending his rice field.

Like the breeze with his rice plants, the project's ripple effects are evident. So far, already 200 of his colleagues have come to him seeking advice. Part of the project's aim involves "training the trainers," so that its benefits may continue to spread once it wraps up.

"They call me ‘Senior Rice Musamesa’ (teacher),” he says with a broad smile.

More than 10 tonnes of hybrid seeds have been distributed to farmers and more than 10 000 acres of the new variety have been planted in Uganda.

The project is also going ahead with efforts to promote the practice of combining rice with fish. Catfish, for example, are in high demand in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Chen and his colleagues have been training Anastasia, Zakaria and hundreds of farmers on the art of fish-rice farming, with more than 50 demonstration sites established across the country.

According to calculations by the project’s experts, by combining the two, a 1 200 square metre rice paddy can produce 1 tonne of paddy rice and 400 kilograms of fish.

Part of the FAO project involves supporting the Aquaculture Research and Development Centre in Kajjansi, where rice-fish culture demonstration and testing sites have been established and where the training of fish farmers in improved production and aquaculture value chains takes place.

In China, the equivalent expression to “the Land of Milk and Honey” is “the Land of Rice and Fish.” This seems fitting given the direction in which agriculture is moving here.

The spread of this ancient Chinese practice in Uganda presents some obstacles, however.

“Charles Oberu, the principal fisheries officer at Uganda's Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries notes that the country’s fish hatcheries are currently too far for many farmers (fish don't reproduce in rice paddies, they need rivers to do so). So the plan is to make hatcheries closer and more accessible to communities to open up this opportunity to other farmers.

Foxtail millet and its porridge

Like in much of the world, the climate crisis requires crops that can thrive with less water.

Wenjing Long, a Chinese expert in the development of new crop varieties at the China-Uganda Agriculture Cooperation Industrial Park (CUACIP), has been testing various crops in Uganda, from eggplants and sorghum to chilli.

One particularly effective crop is foxtail millet (Setaria italica), a grass so called because its seedhead has a golden-reddish hairy panicle that resembles a fox's tail.

The oldest evidence of foxtail millet cultivation was found along the ancient course of the Yellow River in Cishan, China, more than 8 000 years ago. It is the most grown millet species in Asia, but it was not being cultivated in Uganda until recently.

Foxtail millet is not only drought and disease-resistant, meaning its cultivation does not require the spraying of chemical pesticides, it’s also higher-yielding and takes just 85 days to harvest. It is rich in protein and B12 vitamins. Ugandan women have started mixing its flour with cassava to produce a dark, tasty and crispy bread they call kalo. The millet’s dried seeds are ground into flour, which is then mixed with water and cooked in a large cauldron to make a highly nutritious porridge.

Charles Swama is a 40-year-old father of four young boys from an area of Butaleja called Nawanjofu. The eldest is 13 and the youngest is just two months old. He used to work as an engineer, fixing farming machinery and irrigation systems, until he lost his job during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He spotted an opportunity when the project experts introduced foxtail millet to his village in 2023.

“I never had any idea about foxtail millet,” he says, adding that he was persuaded to grow it after hearing about its benefits in terms of higher yields and nutritional content.

Thanks to his engineering background, he figured he would borrow some money to buy a piece of unused land next to a marsh, using the nearby water to irrigate his field.

“When I did my first harvest, I was too inspired, too happy," he says.

Today, he owns nine acres and 14 cattle and uses their manure to fertilise his field - another tip he received from the Chinese experts.

Charles has used his newfound income to expand his farm and pay for his children's schooling, but he says his dream is to purchase a truck that would allow him to transport his products to market.

FAO's role and market opportunities

The SSC project in Uganda has achieved remarkable success. For the current phase of the project, the original plan was to reach 9 600 beneficiaries. However, 70 000 farmers across Uganda have already benefitted from the project, either directly or indirectly.

Where the project has been implemented, rice production has increased fourfold, from 2.5 tonnes to 10 tonnes per hectare, while milk production has risen from two to seven litres per cow per day. Low-cost fish-feeding techniques have boosted aquaculture production, while combining fish with rice, along with the introduction of new crops such as foxtail millet, have generated increased revenues for farmers.

More than 170 new crop varieties have been placed under experimentation, while more than 1 000 farmers have been trained in livestock feeding programmes and 17 poultry demonstration sites have been established, with 11 000 chicks and 25.8 tonnes of poultry feeds delivered to recipients.

One of the SSC’s strengths, according to Antonio Querido, FAO Representative in Uganda, is that it breaks the traditional dichotomy between donors and recipients by ensuring that the transfer of technology and knowledge is tailor-made for the local context and benefits local farmers.

In this regard, FAO plays an important role in ensuring that the technologies being transferred from China to Uganda are sustainable and relevant to the local communities.

“We want farmers to appropriate themselves to good agronomic practices. The role of the Chinese experts is to ensure that, along with the technologies, these agronomic practices are also deployed so farmers understand how best to handle these crops,” FAO Representative Querido says.

China’s ambassador to Uganda, Lizhong Zhang, says China is a strong supporter and advocate of SSC: “The project has been very successful and has set a very good model for the Global South.”

The project is already contributing to Uganda's export market. One Chinese company, for example, has recently placed a substantial order for 70 000 tonnes of chilli peppers, with local producers now scrambling to determine whether they have sufficient capacity to fulfil the order.

The success of the project’s first two phases persuaded the governments of China and Uganda to agree on a three-year extension. Phase three, which started in 2023, aims to expand cereals, livestock and aquaculture production further. It also seeks to build capacity, particularly among women, youth and other marginalised groups and support agricultural investments, agro-industrialization and trade.

Meanwhile, delegations from more than a dozen countries, including Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Tanzania, have already visited Uganda to learn whether the project’s success can be replicated elsewhere in Africa.

Under the FAO-China SSC Programme, FAO has operated projects and training activities in more than 100 countries worldwide since 2009.

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