By Fatou B Cham
Information Officer, MoA
During her monitoring and visibility tour with experts from the Central Project Coordinating Unit (CPCU), the Department of Agriculture, and the Ministry of Agriculture, the Minister of Agriculture, Hon. Amie Faburay was intimated by officials of the agricultural projects at the various sites visited that a total of one thousand (1000) bird-scaring guns have been procured for rice farmers to use in their fields.
The visibility and monitoring tour started on Thursday, 21st April 2022 mainly on the Building Resilience against Food and Nutrition in the Sahel Project (P2RS) intervention sites in the West Coast Region (WCR), Lower River Region (LRR), and Central River Region (CRR).
Ousman Sanyang, representative of Marou Farm Ltd described the timing of the procurement of the equipment as timely and important.
“The equipment are procured through various projects at the Ministry of Agriculture, of which the Rice Value Chain Transformation Project bought 360, P2RS bought 600 while the ROOTS Project bought 400, which sum up to one thousand three hundred and sixty (1360) bird-scaring guns,” he revealed.
Sanyang explained that the equipment are used to drive away not only birds but hippos and monkeys that intrude the rice field.
“These guns do not kill the birds. They are only meant to scare them away and can cover up to five hectares in the rice field. The time the farmers use to consume in staying in the rice field to drive away birds, hippos and monkeys can go up to a month but with this new development, they can carry out their other activities while the equipment drive away the birds from the rice field,” he elucidated.
He went to intimate that the bird-scaring guns are being operated using gas bottles and they can be set on a timer from the interval of two to fifteen minutes.
He assured that the guns are harmless and the only issue they could say is threatening is the sound, which actually drives the birds and hippos away.
“This is affordable to farmers because they only need to fill the gas bottle for D250 after using it for a long period on their farms,” he encouraged.
Sanyang therefore urged the farmers properly utilise the equipment, pointing out that they are costly.