63-year-old Paul Opio cut down his orchard in Opucet Village, which has been earning him at least Shillings 10 million annually after realizing huge losses. Opio started planting oranges in 2009 and has since diversified to other crops like water melons, tomatoes and bananas among others.
A farmer in Bugondo Sub County in Serere district has cut
down his 20 acre orange garden following an outbreak of a strange disease.
63-year-old Paul Opio cut down his orchard in Opucet Village, which has been
earning him at least Shillings 10 million annually after realizing huge losses.
Opio started planting oranges in 2009 and has since
diversified to other crops like water melons, tomatoes and bananas among others.
With other farmers under their association, Otiteba Farmers and Fisheries
Association, Opio has been supplying oranges to Soroti and Busia in Kenya.
But two years ago, he started recording low yields from the
farm, something that compelled him to seek advice from Operation Wealth
Creation and agriculture extension workers in the sub county.
Opio
explains that the cost of maintaining the oranges shot up beyond the earnings
from the orchard following the strange disease outbreak.
He revealed that he used to earn at least Shillings 5 million
from the oranges every season but the earnings reduced to about Shillings 1.3
million.
//Cue in “I went to operation...
Cue out...the medicine”//
Helen Icaku, one of the orange farmers under Otiteba Association,
says they have resorted to planting pine trees instead. She explains that the
trees started drying causing the oranges to fall down before maturing.
Ateso byte
//Cue in “Abu adeka obu...
Cue out...aokoto do ikito”//
Caroline Asekenye, the Serere District Agriculture Officer,
said she is yet to receive information regarding the strange disease attacking
orange trees in the district.
She, however, regrets the decision of the farmer to cut down
the trees, adding that her team will visit the farm to establish details about
the strange disease.
