By Lamin Kujabi
His Excellency President Adama Barrow recently received the policymakers and technicians of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Security for the 3rd quarter Presidential Delivery Forum.
Honourable Dr. Demba Sabally, Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Security, affirmed to the press that their closed door meeting with the President centered on the ongoing projects under his ministry.
He said during this rainy season the ministry has been quite busy; that they distributed about 11,000 bags of fertilizer by the projects at no cost to the farmers.
He said they also distributed two hundred and fifty metric tons of rice seeds and 411 tons of maize seeds to farmers nationwide.
Minister Sabally further informed that the Ministry has helped plough all the 50,000-hectare projects sites some of which are highly subsidized – up to 80%.
He said there are projects that ploughed for farmers at 100% cost to the government.
The Minister also mentioned the matching grants, geared towards empowering youth and women, which he said, has increased financing access to farmers within the past three months.
According to Dr Sabally, the President was happy about the ongoing works while appreciating the few challenges, mainly related to contractors.
He revealed that the President has rated their performance as outstanding. “The works are very impactful and he is very happy with the information. He has encouraged us to continue what we are doing.” said Dr Sabally.
Dr Sabally also informed that the ministry assigned their own engineers from Department of Agriculture to train farmers and conduct road surveys for their road financing through the GIRAV project. He said they are working with National Road Authority and Ministry of Works to construct roads from the World Bank project.
The Minister also informed about the establishment of the National Rice Sufficiency Secretariat, an initiative being funded by African Development Bank (ADB), through P2RS.
“The secretariat will now create a path way to the rice self-sufficiency. The secretariat has been approved and hiring of personnel is in progress”.
Dr Sabally said they were able to buy a lot more tractors, and that the farming communities can now access more tractors “so that when rice is due to harvest they do not need to do it manually”.
He concluded by saying the Chinese, South Korean teams and the ministry’s engineers are all working with private rice producers by guiding and supporting them technically, in terms of demonstration and provision of improved seed varieties.
