Drought-resistant sweet potato tickles Ugandan palates

MBALE, Uganda – Until recently, mother-of-five Ramla Wanyenze could barely spare enough firewood to prepare meals.

Nowadays, she hardly needs any to prepare a steaming portion of orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, a nutritious sweet potato variety.

“Firewood is very hard to find these days,” said Wanyenze, who splits her time between working on her farm in Mbale city and trading homegrown beans and maize at the local market.

“The orange potato is softer so takes less time to cook, meaning I get to save on firewood.” 

She now spends half an hour cooking a meal, instead of hours previously.

The crop was first introduced in Uganda in 2007, as part of a U.S. State Department initiative to cut global hunger and improve food security.

Researchers say it is more resilient than other crops to extreme weather problems such as drought and flooding caused by heavy rains, and it can stay in the ground for a long time after maturity, making the time of harvest less critical.

Over Ugandan 55,000 households now grow the potato and 237,000 are expected to do so by 2018 – most of them as a strategy to cope with drought.

Charles Otunda, a farmer from the nearby Bukedia district, explained that drought is affecting even staple crops like plantain.

He believes that diminished tree cover may have affected nature’s ability to preserve rainfall patterns. 

“Deforestation is a big problem in Uganda,” he said, pointing to stretches of stripped land. “People cut trees but they do not replace them.”

But the strain extends beyond the farm. Declining tree cover has meant that less firewood is available, spelling trouble for households like Wanyenze’s.    

A recent WWF report found that 90 percent of Ugandans use firewood and charcoal for cooking. According to the U.N. Development Programme, uncontrolled firewood collection and charcoal burning accounts for about 80,000 hectares of forest lost each year in the country.

Robert Mwanga, a researcher at the International Potato Center (known by its Spanish acronym CIP), observed that “this problem urgently requires energy-saving innovations, especially among the rural poor as they are those who most rely on firewood and charcoal.”

MULTIPLE BENEFITS

Other than orange potato’s resistance to drought, one of its main selling points is its richness in vitamin A, said Mwanga.

According to the CIP, vitamin A deficiency is a leading cause of blindness, disease and premature death among children under five in sub-Saharan Africa.

Orange potato brings economic benefits, too. About 250 kilometres east of Kampala, the country’s capital, Okwi Yokosapat has planted the crop on his three-acre piece of land.

During the peak-harvest season in March and April, he can make about 4.5 million Uganda Shillings ($1,336) per harvest, by selling the potato and its planting material to other farmers.

“My family is healthy because I save some potato for them to feed on,” he said, adding that he uses the income he gets from the crop to buy other ingredients like meat and flour.

“I no longer struggle to pay for my children’s school fees and recently even bought a bicycle for myself,” he beamed. 

The potato has also given traders like Amina Nakate a business edge.

At her stall in Nylon market, Mbale, time passes quickly for Nakate. No sooner has she served a customer than another falls in line.

In her 10 years of trading there, none of her products – like plantain and cassava – have sold as fast as the sweet potato, she said.

In a day, she can sell about five 200kg bags of the product, yielding an income of 700,000 shillings ($208) per day – compared to $50 previously. 

“Customers like the sweet potato because it cooks quickly and is nutritious”, explained Nakate.

LOOMING CHALLENGE

However, erratic weather threatens Nakate and other’s newfound prosperity.

Nakate said this year’s dry season has been prolonged by more than two months, reducing the stock of orange potato she normally gets from farmers.

“I used to easily order a truckful of the product from farmers, but these days it’s just not available,” she added.  

Okiring Fred, a coordinator with Kachumbala, Chindongole and Butebu, an agency that trains farmers and helps them market their products, acknowledged that unpredictable weather is affecting yields even for drought-resistant varieties.

To remedy this, Charles Otunda believes farmers should broaden their horizons to get more out of the sweet potato.

“Products like chips, doughnuts, chapatis, crisps, pancakes, juices and wedding cakes can be made from the sweet potato,” he said.