Food

Uganda has very fertile soil allowing a wide variety of crops to be grown. Tools are very expensive so Ugandans have to use the bare essentials and that means farming by hand with just staves, hoes and a lot of labour. Most of the food is produced by families on small plots of land around their homes. Fortunately the climate for the most part is good and the soil is very fertile.

But let's not forget the effect of drought and crop disease when food is needed to live. Crop failure could result in malnutrition or at worst starvation. Drought, however, in Uganda is not usually a wide spread problem like much of Africa, it is more localised. This can however cause very severe problems for Local communities.

The effect of deforestation is also important. Wood is needed for building and cooking but when trees are chopped down, the soil is exposed and becomes eroded over a period of time.

Luckily in Uganda there are lots of crops that can be grown such as:

Coffee	Banana
Mango	Sunflower
Tea	Maze
Ground nuts	Casava
Matoke	Soya
Pumpkin	Sweet potato
Cabbage	Onions
Rice (a dry ground variety)
Sim Sim (used for oil and flour)

Foods which build your body:
Beans, ground nuts, milk, fish, peas, meat, millet.

Foods which give you energy:
Maize, millet, rice, potatoes, matoke, meat, fish, cassava.

Foods which help to prevent illness: Fruit, vegetables, animal fats.
In Uganda crop farming is more common but some families also keep some livestock. Coats and chickens are most commonly reared but in the south west of the country there is some cattle farming.

With no electricity or gas, food can only be kept for a limited period of time in storage huts before it rots or becomes infested. Most food in Uganda, is therefore, eaten when it is in season and as a consequence a Ugandan's diet is fairly limited.

The food storage huts mentioned above are very basic. They are certainly nothing like a fridge or freezer. They consist of a simple round hut raised off the ground on small pillars or piles of stones. The walls are woven saplings covered in mud with a thatched roof on top. Whilst they keep out the sun, the rain and most animals, pests such as weevils do get in and the food then deteriorates very quickly.