In Sierra Leone
By Dadson A. Musa
Sierra Leone, located on the west coast of Africa has conducive vast and untapped farmland. The country experiences unfailing rain fall every year. With the availability of precious minerals like diamond, rutile, gold, bauxite, zircon, etc there has been distraction from focusing on agriculture. And the saying is so true that no nation thrives on empty stomach. So 80% of our staple food, rice is imported and it is estimated that we spend up to $400,000,000 every year for this. That in itself makes for trade imbalance or balance of payment deficit. Now there is a renewed focus on agriculture to ensure we reduce rice importation. Donors and other partners have started pouring money to address the food insufficiency problem in this country. But they are faced with huge challenges or threats. If these challenges are not looked into or addressed duly then millions poured in for agriculture will amount to nothing.
The first challenge to be discussed is our road network leading to the farms. They are still in terrible shape. So accessing the farms and the markets is proving very difficult for the farmers. Vehicles, tractors and other machinery get easily broken down. They cause the wasting of perishable farm products also. And bad roads also cause delay in getting products to the market on time.
Another serious challenge facing our farmers is post- harvest losses. So much of our rice is lost for lack of proper storage when it is harvested. The barns are not well constructed or safe enough for storage. Late harvest is also causing huge loss of farm products. And facilities for preservation are grossly inadequate or non- existent. So after toiling for months, our farmers are still losing harvested products a lot.
Inadequate farm technicians or engineers is another serious challenge. A lot of the consultants, engineers for our agricultural projects are foreigners for now. So local content is not addressed and money poured end up with foreigners so there is huge capital flight which is not good for our economy. We are only beginning to train our own experts for mechanized or commercial farming.
Lack of energy and proper irrigation system is another huge challenge. We need electricity supply to get certain farm implements working. And in those rural areas where most farms are, there is no electricity. And for now we rely on rain- fed agriculture which is once a year when it should be year round if there is proper irrigation system.
Climate change has also started playing havoc to our farmers. This past rainy season and most other rainy season suitable farmlands around the country were seriously flooded due to unusually heavy down pours. Most farmers could not get bumper harvest because of this.
Finally, to be able to achieve food self- sufficiency we must take politics away from it. Politicians have no business with farming. They must stop pretending that they are farmers. For the achievement of food sufficiency they should leave the practice to career farmers but make policies that support their trade without bias. We are still a long way from achieving our food sufficiency goals but if we look into these and other challenges then we’ll start feeding ourselves.