By Jimmy Siyasa

In a country that hosts over a million refugees, one of the most urgent questions facing policymakers and aid agencies is deceptively simple: how do you feed everyone when the land is running out?

A new study by researchers Turyayesiima N. and Bulyaba R. from Uganda Christian University’s Faculty of Agricultural Sciences offers compelling evidence that the answer may lie in two climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices — agroforestry and irrigation — that are already reshaping food outcomes in Northern Uganda’s refugee communities.

The study, published in the International Journal of Research and Scientific Innovation (Volume XIII, Issue II, February 2026), examined 375 farming households in and around Bidibidi refugee settlement in Yumbe District. Bidibidi, which opened in 2016 to accommodate South Sudanese refugees fleeing civil conflict, quickly became one of the largest refugee settlements on earth. The sheer scale of displacement placed enormous pressure on the surrounding land, forests, and water resources.

Since 2018, government agencies and NGOs have promoted climate-smart agriculture as a way to boost food production while building resilience against erratic rainfall and shrinking farmland. But until now, there has been limited empirical evidence on whether these interventions are actually working in refugee contexts.

The UCU researchers set out to fill that gap. Using Food Consumption Scores — a standard metric developed by the World Food Programme to measure dietary diversity and frequency — they assessed household food availability and then applied binary logistic regression to determine which farming practices made a measurable difference.

The results were striking. Households that practised agroforestry — integrating trees and shrubs into their farming systems — had 5.1% higher odds of achieving acceptable food availability compared to those that did not. Irrigation proved even more impactful: households with access to irrigation saw a 4.8% increase in the odds of adequate food consumption, largely because it enabled year-round production regardless of seasonal rainfall patterns.

Perhaps more surprising was the finding on kitchen gardening. While widely promoted as a quick win for household nutrition, backyard gardens were actually associated with a 6.1% reduction in the odds of food sufficiency. The researchers attribute this to the practice’s limited scale — small plots of vegetables simply cannot substitute for staple crop production in settings where families are large and land is constrained.

The study also revealed important demographic and structural realities. Nearly all households surveyed (97.1%) had access to agricultural land, reflecting Uganda’s progressive refugee policy that grants displaced persons the right to farm. However, only 37.1% actually owned the land they cultivated. Most refugees depended on temporary allocations brokered by the Office of the Prime Minister — arrangements that are increasingly precarious as plot sizes shrink with each new wave of arrivals.

Women headed the majority of households in the study (56.3%), a pattern consistent with broader trends in refugee populations where men are often absent due to conflict, migration, or seasonal labour. This finding underscores the critical importance of designing agricultural programmes that specifically target and empower female farmers.

Based on their findings, the researchers recommend that government and development partners scale up agroforestry and irrigation programmes in refugee settlements, strengthen gender-responsive agricultural support, and explore innovative land-sharing arrangements that give refugees more secure access to productive farmland.

“The general conclusion is that, to achieve food availability, promotion of irrigation technologies and widespread uptake of agroforestry need to be embraced,” the authors write, noting that these practices enhance both resilience and productivity in fragile contexts.

The full study is available in the International Journal of Research and Scientific Innovation (DOI: 10.51244/IJRSI.2026.13020088)