Post-Conflict Soil Recovery and Food Security in Northern Uganda: Long-Term Land-Use Consequences of Armed Conflict in the Acholi Sub-Region

Abstract

Northern Uganda’s Acholi sub-region experienced prolonged armed conflict that deeply disrupted rural settlement, agricultural production, and land-use continuity. Although post-conflict recovery has often been assessed through resettlement, infrastructure restoration, and humanitarian return, less attention has been given to the ecological condition of the land to which communities returned. This paper examines the long-term consequences of conflict for soil recovery and food security in smallholder farming landscapes, with particular attention to districts such as Gulu and surrounding areas formerly affected by displacement, military presence, and disrupted cultivation cycles.
The study focuses on three interrelated processes: degradation of topsoil fertility following prolonged disturbance and abandonment; possible localized contamination associated with former military encampments and conflict-related land use; and the difficulty of restoring productive farming systems after years of displacement, fallow disruption, and loss of agricultural continuity. Rather than treating post-conflict food insecurity only as an economic or humanitarian problem, the paper frames it as a land-use and soil-system problem shaped by the environmental afterlife of war.
By combining available soil-condition observations, local farming challenges, and community-based evidence, the presentation proposes a framework for targeted soil rehabilitation in post-conflict agricultural landscapes.