By Mabinty M. Kamara
The government of Sierra Leone, through the ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, has called for greater local participation in agricultural activities to help ensure food security in the country.
The Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Sam-King Braima, made the call at the weekly government press briefing on Thursday.
“Food insecurity should be everybody’s business. Put in your own little way that you can, make yourself available, and put yourself into smaller groups and the ministry will muster support from our public finances where available to support your efforts,” he said, adding: “every bag of rice that we buy from outside Sierra Leone is making another farmer rich in his own country, so why not we produce our own?”
Mr. Brima noted that in a bid to achieve food security in the country, the ministry is working with both local and development partners to make sure they galvanize the needed resources both human and financial for the implementations of their projects.
Brima said they also support private sector intervention and public sector engagements. On the public sector front, he said for the first time the Sierra Leone government has organized chiefdom farms in collaboration with other relevant ministries such as Youth, Finance and the Local Government.
This year government has set aside 6% of its total budget to invest in Agriculture. Some of the government’s initiatives are youth farms in chiefdoms across the country and military farms, all geared towards the long term food sufficiency goal.
The project which is set to start this year will see the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces cultivate up to 5000 hectares of rice in the next two to three years. The target is for them to be able to feed on what they grow.
Food security has always been a problem for Sierra Leone. Farmers in the country are still heavily reliant on subsistence farming. Calls for mechanized farming has not been backed up with the necessary actions.
A huge amount of the rice the country consumes is imported from countries like, China, India and Pakistan. Last year government said over US$200 million was used just to import rice.
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