By Sorie Sudan Sesay, Freetown.
As part of its campaign on hunger, ActionAid Sierra Leone, in a recent report, has recommended that for the country to achieve President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah’s food security dream,
the amount of seed rice given to farmers must be increased to meet the recommended standard of 2.5 bushel per household.
ActionAid Country Director, Tennyson Williams(photo) had
earlier called on world leaders including the Sierra
Leonean government to eradicate extreme poverty by
2015 and a number of activities have been organised as
part of this campaign.
This recent report by ActionAid is part of research
it conducted entitled ‘Tracking Delivery of Government
Support And Assessing Access For Poor Rural Farmers
Especially Women In Sierra Leone’ which had already
been launched by ActionAid.
The report also called on the Ministry of
Agriculture and Food Security to put in place
modalities for the formation and registration of
farmer groups and associations and that it should
mandatory for women to be represented in every
community within the group/association and that women
should be encouraged to go into farming through the
provision of special facilities such as farming
equipment and credit.
The report stipulates that government, through the Seed
Multiplication Project, must put in place modalities
for the early distribution of inputs to farmers and
that the number of Field Extension
Workers should be increased and supported with the
necessary logistics so as to make them accessible to
farmers.
Another recommendation made in the report was that a
policy should be put in place to allow the ministry
to meet the cost of operating the machines for at least
three years in order to put farmers on a better
footing.
The AcionAid report also called on government to expedite
the implementation of the Abuja Declaration to provide
fertilizers at affordable cost.
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