AYV News, December 12, 2024
According to reports, Sierra Leone spends approximately $ 200 million annually on rice imports. Statistically, rice imports account for 35% of the country’s rice supply.
Due to this soaring cost on import, Journalist- Abass Sesay and his wife Fatmata Abass Kabia decided to embark on rice cultivation at Makari Chiefdom, Bombali District. As this is their first venture in rice production, they started with 5.5 hectares with support from SierraTec Secure – an agriculture based company.
Over the last five years, the couple has been cultivating other crops like groundnuts, cassava, and vegetables of different types. As a journalist, Abass was inspired into farming by covering agriculture related stories- ranging from successes in farming, challenges faced by farmers to food insecurity in the country.
Abass and Fatmata are poised to become master farmers in the next few years, and they are optimistic to attain this feat in farming through collaboration, support, and strategic partnership from agriculture based organisations or projects and government of Sierra Leone.
Fatmata Abass Kabia, coordinator of the farm project, while sharing her experience in farming, described this business venture as capital intensive and challenging. She further explained that, herself and husband are spending a huge amount of money to hire machines as well as human labour to perform farm activities like ploughing, harrowing, seed broadcast and harrowing, weeding and harvesting.
She went on to highlight challenges affecting both production and productivity in farming and among them include limited availability of: farm machines, farm inputs, and poor road network. On the area of limited availability of farm machines, Fatmata Abass Kabia said that limited number of tractors and combined harvesters is reducing farm outputs and worsened post harvest loss.
As harvesting of rice is ongoing in the district, Ms. Kabia confirmed that lots of farmers are struggling to access combined harvesters to harvest their rice. “Most farmers, including me and my husband, had to hire human labour to harvest our 5.5 hectares of rice farm.” She added that an activity that was supposed to take two days with the use of a combined harvester had to span for almost two weeks, hiring twenty able men for the same purpose.
For “Feed Salone” to achieve its goal of a food sufficient country, Fatmata Abass requested the government of Sierra Leone and partners to “depoliticise” farming supports and meanwhile expand farming assistance especially to female farmers. She emphasized the need to support real farmers on the ground who are passionate about contributing to a food secure country. Ms. Kabia confirmed that they have plans to support other farmers, especially women who are engaging in small-scale farming with seeds and technical supports – as a way of social responsibility.
In reaching this goal, she said that they will establish an agriculture based organization whose thematic areas will be: Green or Smart Farming, Environment Protection/Management, and Gender Empowerment.
Fatmata Abass Kabia informed this medium that they will embark on vegetable cultivation during this dry season at Inland Valley Swamps. Herself and her husband- Abass Sesay, expressed appreciation to SierraTec Secure for its support in reaching this goal.
