According to the Smith College Museum of Ancient Inventions:

“The hoe is the earliest distinctly agricultural implement. First the digging stick was used, then deer antlers, a bronze hoe was discovered from 2000 BCE in the Caucasus.”

Over the years and centuries, this invention has been modified to the ‘modern hoes’ now in use in Uganda. “Despite using the hand hoe, her family never lacked food,” New Vision reported in a 28th January 2011 story: “Agriculture in 50 years: from hand-hoe to nontraditional cash crops” of how a smallholder farmer reminisced about her lived experiences.

Even though, Daily Monitor, in a story published online on 16th October 2024, headlined a disturbing and difficult to believe statistic that “3 in 10 Ugandans going without food daily.” However, be that as it may, that millions of Ugandans are malnourished due to their inability to access food, the statistic also means 70 percent have food daily.

It is fact. The majority of Ugandans are accessing food that is grown by smallholder farmers who mostly grow it through a “highly diversified system of agriculture” as opposed to a a “more specialized and commercialized system,” as characterized by the National Planning Authority.

In the practice of “highly diversified agriculture” the most important and crucial production tool is the handheld hoe. The handheld hoe invention needs due appreciation, especially so, in these times of the food systems transformation and biodiversity debates.

It is the most appropriate tool for the kind of agriculture for food that harms the environment less. And which, in fact, restores and rejuvenates soils for better food production.

Methods such as the Zai Technique, for example, should be popularized in Uganda to counter impact of climate change on our rain-fed agricultural system. Read more in “The Zai technique: how farmers in the Sahel grow crops with little to no water.”

Images borrowed from a Facebook page. Examples of Zai Technique in action.

Indeed, I am befuddled as to why significant ‘expert’ time and other resources are being spent in Uganda to ‘modernize’ in a manner that will destroy our highly diversified system of agriculture.

I am open to qualitative empirical studies and or data that demonstrate a better farming invention than the hand hoe in the context of Uganda. This is the kind of research I would be interested in to participate, to consume and use findings.

Otherwise, for now, the superficial onslaught against the hand hoe in favour of tractors in Uganda, for example, at best is misguided. Worse, it is straight forward dishonest and not backed by empirical research.