Farmers in the Teso Sub-region are waiting for intervention from the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries to address the concerns raised by the Bukedea County Member of Parliament regarding the aflatoxin situation in Teso.
Charles Aege of Kongunga Town Council said the issues Hon. Okwere raised are a true reflection of the suffering that grassroots communities face.
Hon. David Beecham Okwere, the Bukedea County MP, raised the matter as a matter of national importance in Parliament on August 28 to 29, 2026.
During his submission, Hon. Okwere told Parliament that the discovery was made during a recent oversight visit by the Committee on National Economy to Soroti Industrial Park. The team visited PELA Commodities Factory, a factory that adds value to cereals such as millet, sorghum, maize and other grains.
He said what they learnt at the factory is that about 80 percent of cereals purchased from farmers contain aflatoxins. He told the House that this is a red flag that all the people in Teso Sub-region are consuming aflatoxins.
Hon. Okwere warned that if the situation is not addressed, residents of Teso risk developing cancer and other liver diseases as a result of consuming contaminated food. He also linked the concern to unexplained daily deaths in his constituency, saying several people are buried every day although the exact causes of some deaths are not established.
He therefore called for immediate intervention by the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries to mitigate the crisis.
Meanwhile, farmers say they are also making losses in the market because of the same problem. Moses Tukei of Mukongoro Town Council in Kumi District said farmers in Teso are making losses in agricultural produce because when the produce is taken to Kenya, detector machines indicate that it is not fit for human consumption because of the chemicals used for spraying and poor post-harvest handling. Tukei said the war against toxins should be addressed more than corruption because it directly affects the health and livelihood of the people.
Another farmer, John Julius Okaki from Akisim Sub County in Pallisa district , said all the food eaten now is adulterated and NARO should come up with seeds that do not necessarily need to be sprayed. Okaki said both hunger and poverty are slowly killing people because failure to get money for buying green vegetables that are safe has forced women to pick cow peas leaves to cook even after they have just been sprayed.
In response to Hon. Okwere’s submission in Parliament, the State Minister for Agriculture, Hon. Desire Muhoozi, said government had invested in an aflatoxin removal machine for the Teso Sub-region but the equipment had remained idle since 2018, and that the Uganda Development Corporation has now taken on the responsibility to privatize it. The State Minister for Industry, Hon. David Bahati, said he will coordinate with MAAIF and send a technical team to Soroti to establish facts on the ground.
After his submission, the National Agricultural Research Organisation contacted Hon. Okwere the same day. In a message, Senior Internal Auditor at NARO, William Odeke, said the concern raised by the MP and his Committee about aflatoxin contamination in grain in Teso and the country at large is very important.
He noted that NARO already has solutions to the challenge, including an aflatoxin testing kit for detecting contamination and an aflatoxin control product that is currently being commercialized at NaLIRRI in Nakyesasa, Namulonge.
According to Odeke, the key gap is dissemination and awareness, as many farmers, traders and other stakeholders may not yet know that these technologies are available. He said this is an opportunity for the leadership at Parliament to work with NARO and MAAIF to take the solutions to the affected communities, demonstrate how they work and support their wider use.
He emphasized that the country does not have to start by looking for a new solution because NARO already has solutions, and the priority now is to move them from NARO to the farmers and other players in the grain value chain where they are most needed.