Philip Conteh the director of agriculture in Kailahun district has said that the district could have boasted of a bumper harvest this year but pests has greatly affected farmers in the district wishing to cultivate large acreages in various produce.
He said the spread of various kinds of pests including insects; butterflies and grasshoppers have destroyed a very good number of farms around Kailahun causing low yields in produce.
He said, it is believed that most of the pests and other animals are migrating from both Liberia and Guinea and sadly enough the ministry does not seem to have corresponding solution towards the problem thereby making farms vulnerable to insects, he said.
The Director also said that, inadequate tractors, thrashers and combined harvesters may directly affect bumper harvest due to post harvest loses, adding that drying floors and stores are not existent in most farms around Kailahun and its surroundings
Conteh further explained that some of the subsidies given to farmers in some of the chiefdoms in Kailahun are now scoring high recovery rate in the district, despite the many challenges faced by farmers in the district.
He said since the war ended in the country they were giving incentives to people in Kailahun which he said led to low recovery rate of seed rice over the years, but with the new focus of the ministry of Agriculture, of commercializing agriculture, they are likely to have bumper harvest.
He said ‘they are now sensitizing farmers to come together in a homogeneous group so that they can be empowered to embark on large scale farming rather giving individual support to farmers and we have come to realized that we are making progress as we have record of some groups that are making progress in certain chiefdoms of the district.’
He mentioned Peje West chiefdom as one of those chiefdoms that is on record for high recovery in the district, pointing out that in 2008 they recovered 90% of the input given to farmers which a clear indication that the people are now adaptive to the new commercialization of agriculture in that district.
He said they now work in a team as required by the ministry new mandate which he said required them to work with extension workers in all the district blocs so as to provide proper supervision to farmers in order to attract bumper harvest.
The extension workers are expected to get a data of all the seed rice distributed and to make sure that the collect data of the number of beneficiaries so they might be able to get statistics of annual yield in all the farming communities in the district.
“The extensions supervisors are directly supervised by the crops officers who go out in the field collate information on rice production before giving it out to the public” he added.
He explained that the essence of the new focus is to ensure that these big groups don’t only; produce for consumption but to also establish seed banks so the high incidence of over dependence on the central government to give incentives to farmers would be a thing of the past.
He said with this new initiative they have record of some groups in the district who were in possession of between 200 to 300 bushels of seed rice enquiring as to whether government would be interested in buying from them or not, but said they usually advised them to on how to do separation of seed rice as some of the farmers don’t know how to separate but noted that they are professional in handling seed rice so that it might not be mixed.
He however pleaded with government to encourage establishment of seed rice companies like the seed multiplication project and other outlets so that they can standardize seeds to get unified varieties.
Kailahun district he noted , is a cash crop district where farmers before the war were heavily engaged in cash crop production like coffee and cocoa form which they derived direct benefit but during the rains they used the money on purchasing rice for their consumption which very unreasonable.
He explained that they have now strategize serious sensitization mechanism so as to encourage more farmers to prioritize rice production or to it simultaneously with tree plant production but I now sensitize them to embark on rice production.
He confirmed that they recently approve some 5 projects that would be funded by the rural private sector development program which is a World Bank project under the purview of the Ministry of Agriculture.
He stated that they identified most of the groups they have been working with and shown the criteria to benefit from the marching grant from the rural private sector development project.
He revealed that 30 groups have been identified in the district that would be given input to help them on swamp development depends they meet the required criteria of producing 25% of their local input to access the marching grant from the rural private sector development program.
By Saidu Bah
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