The Leader and Presidential candidate for the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) Andrew Turay is an agriculturist by profession. Questioned about he governments claim to having substantially achieved food self sufficiency, Mr Turay blasted “They have not achieved it no country can achieve self sufficiency if the livestock industry is not developed you cannot achieve it.”
He stated “rice is nobody’s staple food its food for the poor” adding “the richer you become the less rice you eat.”
Explaining further Mr Turay said “go to receptions nobody serves rice there, they eat meat, they eat fish, they eat shrimps, not rice so rice is nobody’s staple food its food for the poor.”
The consultant agriculturist maintained “we must try to raise the standard of living of Sierra Leoneans such that they can afford to eat meat if you have meat you can eat anything.”
He asked “tell me if you are given meat, good stew with chicken and everything with cassava in the evenings or plantains will you leave that to eat rice, cassava leaves and bonga you will not that’s the bottom line.”
He went on “we’ve told them over and over in the Ministry that they must develop the livestock industry. The major crop in America is corn, corn is not grown for human consumption per se it is grown for the livestock industry to raise pigs and everything so that you can have milk cheese and other by-products of the meat industry, here” he added “the most expensive part of the food is meat, chicken is unaffordable meat is unaffordable if there were no minas and bonga nobody will even touch a taste of animal protein in this country so I say if the livestock industry is not developed we will never achieve food security.”
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