Impacts on access to factors of production among smallholder farmers in central Uganda during COVID-19 lockdown

Abstract

The novel coronavirus 2019 which has brought about the covid 19 pandemics has hit the whole world starting from the super economies to underdeveloped economies. The impacts are being felt hard in developing countries whose economy relies on agriculture especially Sub-Saharan Africa. Uganda is amongst the countries in Africa which observed the longest period of total confinement during the Covid 19 outbreak. Hence this study aimed at the impact of Covid 19 total lockdown on labour availability, land accessibility and market access among smallholder farmers in Masaka district in Uganda. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from ninety smallholder farmers in the Masaka district. The findings of the study indicated that 75.6 and 73.3% of the respondents were not able to access labour and their farms, respectively while all the respondents were not able to acquire farm inputs for their farming activities. Also, 74.4% of the respondents were able to sell some of their farm produce during the COVID-19 total lockdown at a low price.