In post-war northern Uganda, peace is not just negotiated at high-level tables. It is planted, weeded, and harvested.
Omoro and Gulu districts carry deep scars like many districts in the region. From 1987 until 2006, they were at the epicenter of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) war led by rebel leader Joseph Kony, who was born in Odek sub-county in Omoro.
The conflict displaced nearly 2 million people into internally displaces persons (IDP) camps, broke trust, and left a generation growing up with hunger and suspicion. Although the guns fell silent in 2007, the post-war fragility remains. Now, climate change and land conflicts are testing that fragile peace again. Amidst this backdrop, women-led innovative interventions are climate conflict with peace seeds.
At 8:00 a.m. in Otong Village, Omoro district, Esther Adong, a single mother and grandmother of two boys, is already in her garden harvesting beans. The morning dew has not lifted yet. “If I am to wait until the dew has lifted, I will not be able to do other garden work,” she says.
For Esther, farming is not just about food. It is about keeping peace on the table inside homes and across the community.
When Hunger Leaves the Household
Uganda is facing severe climate change conflicts and in northern Uganda, the situation is worsened with land conflicts and migration of herders in search of grazing land for their animals. According to Esther, how one plants can determine whether peace holds, both inside the family and across the community.
The challenge is real. When food is scarce, pressure builds in the home and in communities as well. Esther notes that if you make the mistake of planting everything at once, you risk losing everything. “The consequences are poverty, theft, domestic violence, and early marriages,” she says.
That pressure migrates from the household door to the community level. For the women of Omoro and Gulu, prolonged hunger does not stop at the doorstep. When harvests fail, it pushes communities into a high poverty state and increases community crimes.
The lost boundaries during displacement are sparking land conflicts. Unemployed youth have become vulnerable to being lured into violent gangs commonly known as Aguu or AGU. The region is also experiencing fresh tension following the arrival of nomadic cattle keepers from western Uganda.
“When there is no food, neighbors accuse each other of stealing. Young men who are known as AGU move with pangas at night. That is how small hunger is becoming a big fight in the village communities,” Esther explains.
Rebuilding Trust: How Planting Helps Communities Trust Again
After the LRA war, rebuilding trust has been as hard as rebuilding homes. People who once hid together in camps returned to find boundaries erased and relationships broken.
Despite these challenges, Esther and her fellow women farmers are quietly repairing that fabric through rotational labor support locally called awak. They gather and help fellow farmers. “When it is my turn, I prepare enough food and after the harvest, planting or weeding, we sit and eat together,” Esther says.
These groups are more than labor. While they weed, they dialogue and resolve disputes, share market information, and make merry together. By working on each other’s land, former displaced families are learning to trust each other again, a trust the LRA war destroyed.
The Succession Planting Model for Climate Peace
Their innovation is a simple, low-cost phase planting system that guarantees food across seasons. Right at the onset of rainfall, Esther plants fast-maturing vegetables like boo, which takes less than a month. Prepared with peanut butter, it eliminates the most severe stretch of hunger.
Secondly, food crops like beans that take two to three months are planted and usually intercropped with maize, peas, and sometimes fast-growing cassava. They fix nitrogen in the soil, stabilizing it and improving food security.
Then come the drought-resistant crops like sorghum and long-term cassava are planted at staggered intervals so that if one fails due to erratic rains, another could possibly survive.
Upon harvesting, some harvest is preserved for the next planting season. “This is to avoid buying seeds at the onset of the next season and gives you full control of timely planting at the start of the season,” Esther adds.
What is powerful about this model is that it makes climate adaptation practical and peacebuilding tangible. By keeping food on the table throughout the year, Esther and her women’s group are not only reducing domestic violence in farming households but are preventing the larger communal violence, land conflicts, and armed theft that hunger fuels in a post-war region.
Their four-phase approach shows that gender-led farming is not only feeding families but also building lasting peace in post-war communities. It is a simple innovation others can learn from. They do not need an extension worker. It is practical, low-cost, and can be borrowed by other communities seeking to turn food security into community trust and climate resilience into everyday peace.
Keywords: Uganda, Omoro, women-led, women, gender, farming, phase planting, planting, deeds, gardening, peace, conflict, conflict resolution
Aggrey Ojok Obwoyo is a storyteller with the Peace Journalism Foundation of East Africa, based in Omoro, northern Uganda focusing on climate, community resilience and sustainable livelihoods.
