MBALE, Uganda: The districts of Kumi, Mayuge, Mbale and Bugiri lie within some of the country’s most productive agricultural zones, where millions of small-scale farming households grow the food that sustains the region and contributes significantly to national food security.
Yet the farmers doing this work face a convergence of pressures that no amount of productive potential can absorb indefinitely: erratic rainfall, degraded soils, rising input costs, market exclusion and a policy environment that has historically rewarded chemical-intensive agriculture while systematically under-resourcing the ecological farming systems that most of these communities practise and depend on.
The Eastern and Southern Africa Small-scale Farmers Forum (ESAFF Uganda) is responding to these crises by advancing an agroecological transition anchored in Community Agroecology Schools (CAS), a farmer-led, community-governed learning institution in which smallholder farmers, the majority of them women, collectively generate, test, document and share agroecological knowledge grounded in their own ecological and cultural context.
Nationally, ESAFF Uganda operates 37 Community Agroecology Schools with a combined membership of 1,095 farmers, 56 percent of whom are women. The organisation has directly trained 567 farmers through the CAS model.
These are not passive training recipients. They are active knowledge producers whose practices, innovations and documented outcomes are building the evidence base that Uganda’s agroecology policy agenda urgently needs.
The CAS model is grounded in the 13 High-Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) Principles of Agroecology, an internationally recognised scientific framework that treats food production as an integrated ecological, social, economic and governance system. It is not an alternative to science. It is science applied to the conditions in which smallholder farmers actually live and work.
From May 4 to 8, 2026, ESAFF Uganda undertook a strategic strengthening and institutionalisation exercise across Community Agroecology Schools in Kumi, Mayuge, Mbale and Bugiri districts under the Enabling Transformative Agroecology Programme (ETAP), a three-year global initiative running from 2026 to 2028 and implemented through the ECOTOPIA programme with support from DKA Austria and Horizont3000.
The primary objective was to establish and strengthen functional CAS leadership committees across the four districts, with communities electing or reaffirming leaders with clear mandates while prioritising women and youth inclusion. The exercise also focused on curriculum development through reviewing and aligning the CAS curriculum with ECOTOPIA’s research agenda and parish development plans to ensure it responds to local ecological and economic challenges while generating structured evidence for policy engagement.
Strengthening Community Governance
Edith Grace Nulwende, Chairperson of ESAFF Bugiri, said the exercise had brought clarity and structure to how Community Agroecology Schools operate.
“It is important that today we were guided on how a CAS operates, and our leaders, including the facilitator who had been doing the work informally, now operate with clearer mandates. I am also happy that new leaders, particularly women and youth, have stepped into leadership positions, bringing fresh energy and ideas,” Nulwende said.
Governance clarity is not merely a bureaucratic exercise. It is what determines whether a community institution can endure beyond any single programme cycle, leader or donor intervention.
Agroecology in Practice
During the May field visits, Community Agroecology School members across all four districts demonstrated the practical application of agroecological principles in their gardens, including intercropped plots of nakati, tomatoes, eggplants, cabbage and legumes grown alongside fruit trees such as avocado, guava and mango.
For participating farmers, the impact extends beyond production and into household food security.
Mabonga Susan, Chairperson of Bukiende CAS in Mbale District, said the knowledge gained through the schools has enabled members to maintain food availability throughout the season.
“As members of the CAS, we have had vegetables available at all times because of the knowledge we acquired from the school. We regularly water our gardens, and this has ensured a steady supply of food throughout the season,” she said.
This testimony carries policy significance. A farming household that maintains food access through a climate-stressed dry season without relying on expensive synthetic inputs is simultaneously demonstrating climate adaptation, reduced production costs and strengthened food sovereignty.
Building the Evidence Base
Alongside governance strengthening, ESAFF Uganda conducted a Participatory Agroecology Initiatives Mapping exercise involving 138 farmers across the four districts.
The exercise used a purpose-built digital tool grounded in the 13 Principles of Agroecology to systematically document what farmers are practising, what they know, the challenges they face and where resources need to be directed.
The findings establish a compelling baseline.
The data shows that 99 percent of mapped farmers are active agroecological producers, while 92 percent practise soil conservation through composting, mulching or intercropping. Fifty-five percent save and share indigenous seeds, reinforcing local food sovereignty, while 95 percent reported active youth engagement in agroecological practices. Additionally, 86 percent expressed willingness to join certification systems for agroecological produce.
However, the mapping also exposed significant structural barriers.
Eighty-nine percent of farmers identified limited knowledge and skills as their primary challenge, underscoring the critical role of Community Agroecology Schools in supporting the transition. Seventy-five percent cited financing constraints, while 95 percent reported having no formally registered land, creating tenure insecurity that undermines long-term ecological investment and access to credit.
The study further revealed that 59 percent of farmers lack access to markets that recognise and reward agroecological production.
Rather than a cause for pessimism, these findings present a clear policy roadmap.
They tell government, development partners and Parliament exactly where investments and regulatory reforms are needed to support a transformation that communities are already driving through their own knowledge, labour and resources.
Policy Support Remains Critical
The May 2026 strengthening exercise delivered important gains, including functional governance committees, clearer operational mandates, improved curriculum alignment and a documented evidence base from 138 farmers.
Yet Community Agroecology School members remain clear about what is still needed.
Farmers are calling for exchange learning visits to observe agroecological practices in other regions, improved access to tools, irrigation infrastructure and equipment, stronger market linkages that reward agroecological produce, and public agricultural financing that reaches smallholder farmers directly rather than being absorbed by institutional intermediaries.
Ronald Bagaga, Programmes Manager at ESAFF Uganda, said the organisation will continue advocating for increased public investment in agroecological initiatives.
“As ESAFF Uganda, we will continue to advocate for increased public agriculture financing specifically for agroecological initiatives that reaches small-scale farmers directly, and for policy environments that reward ecological stewardship rather than penalising it,” Bagaga said.
The call comes at a time when Uganda’s National Development Plan IV, the Food and Nutrition Bill before Parliament and the National Agroecology Strategy all provide pathways through which agroecological approaches can be better resourced, mainstreamed and monitored.
For communities across Eastern Uganda, the evidence is already emerging from the ground. The challenge now is whether policy and financing frameworks will move quickly enough to support a transition that farmers themselves have already begun.
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