Maize is one of the most important cereal crops in Uganda. In particular, smallholder farmers rely on it for food and as a cash crop¹. Maize is cultivated on about 1.5 million hectares of land and in terms of area planted, maize is the third most cultivated crop after banana and beans in Uganda.

Uganda  has the potential of producing up to 7.5 million metric tons utilizing the current land area under maize by utilizing improved varieties and crop management technology (AATF/NARO, 2010)¹. However, this is never achieved largely due to various production constraints including low soil fertility, use of poor quality maize varieties, erratic rainfall patterns and drought stress during some seasons. Maize production is generally characterized by low yields, which result in high unit costs and thus low returns. Regardless of the farm sizes, Uganda’s maize yield levels are low and are generally between 1.0 and 1.8 metric tons/ hectare leading low output and low income to small scale farmers³.

Crop failure due to above factors has caused losses of up to 80%. The magnitude of the problem is high in districts of eastern Uganda such as Jinja (Buwenge village) where losses can reach catastrophic levels³.

To address these challenges;

 Child Care Empowerment aims at training small scale farmers. with good agriculture practices (GAP) at a demonstration field,  providing agriculture inputs (40kg of improved maize variety, 20 hoes, 40kg fertilizers, 20 tarpaulin for post harvest handling ) and linking farmers to viable agriculture markets to improve on food security  and increased income of maize  producers in Buwenge.