By Sallieu T. Kamara
I listened with rapt attention, a couple of days ago, to the Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security, Marie Jalloh. She was giving an interview to a lunch time programme on AIT Television. I must say with all honesty that I did admire her. She was highly articulate, very knowledgeable with a dogged determination to accomplish what, in my view, is the unimaginable.
I was particularly captivated by her responses to questions bordering on the Smallholder Commercialization Programme, an initiative of the Government of Sierra Leone aimed primarily at reducing rural poverty and household food insecurity on a sustainable basis. It was created under the National Sustainable Agriculture Development Plan.
Laudable
The Smallholder Commercialization Programme (SCP) is a laudable attempt by the government and its development partners to address the perennial problem of poverty and food insecurity in the country, particularly rural farming communities. The Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security, Dr Sam Sesay, reiterated this as the major objective of the programme whilst he was launching it at Waterloo in the Western Area Rural District on Wednesday 8 September 2010.
At the centre of the programme is the Agriculture Business Centres (ABCs), which are owned and managed by associations of farmer-based organizations (FBOs) with the long-term objective of becoming commercial entities such as limited liability companies or cooperatives that are providing vital services to their respective rural communities. The membership of each ABC ranges from three to five FBOs. The FBOs are themselves composed of clusters of Farmer Field Schools (FFS), which have a membership of 25-30 farmers each.
Smallholder farmers
Through the ABCs, the government seeks to move the smallholder farmer away from the use of the hoe and cutlass to the use of modern farming facilities such as tractors, rice tillers, improved seeds, fertilizers, herbicides, harvesters, de-stoners, threshers, rice mills and cassava graters. The overarching objective of this is to lift the rural farmer out of extreme poverty. Already, it is reported that the ministry has constructed at least one ABC in each of the 149 chiefdoms in the country.
But is the programme producing the desired results after a few years of its implementation? As far as I know, the SCP is still far short of reaching its target. And I am saying this with authority because I have been a regular traveller to many parts of rural Sierra Leone in the past five years or so. This avails me the opportunity to see the structures that have been constructed under the programme and their utilisation, as well as getting the views of smallholder farmers for whom the SCP was initiated.
Problems
The programme, it seems, is beset by many problems ranging from structural, weak governance, poor information-sharing and coordination, poverty and limited accessibility. The ABCs should serve as a gateway to the commercialisation of all rural farmers across the country, but the nature of their ownership as highlighted above makes it difficult for majority of the farmers to fully benefit from the services that the ABCs are providing.
Like many other brilliant government initiatives in the past, the programmes put in place to educate the farmers in rural communities about the importance of the ABCs and the idea behind their establishment, the services they offer and how to access such services, as well as how these structures will be run were grossly inadequate. In the absence of this, the larger proportion of farmers sees the ABCs as the exclusive property of a few of their colleagues who belong to the FFS. Ask ten farmers in communities where the ABCs are sited and not more than three will tell you precisely what they can offer and what they are all about.
Conflicting interests
The location of the ABCs also poses a serious challenge. For many chiefdoms there were serious tussles over where the ABCs should be constructed as every stakeholder tried to flex their muscles over each other. The Paramount Chief would want the ABC to be located in his place of interest regardless of whether it was conducive for the purpose or not. So also was the Member of Parliament, the councilor or the minister who is a descendant of the chiefdom.
In most cases, officials of the ministry who have the responsibility to assess the suitability of the location and make recommendations to their bosses were embarrassingly caught up in this quagmire. This has resulted in the unnecessary delays in the construction of some ABCs, whilst others that were constructed are never used by farmers because of the unsuitability of their locations. Is this not a waste of tax payers and donor monies?
Most disturbing
Perhaps, what appears to me to be most disturbing is the fact that the ABCs are almost always closed, apart from a few farmers that use the drying floors that are attached to them. As commercial entities, the ABCs should be run like community shops where farmers can go to at anytime of the day to buy farming inputs and to sell their produce. They can also go there for invaluable technical advice on how they should go about their farming activities, including information on new farming methods using improved seed varieties and how to enhance the produce chain for more profitable marketing.
I want to believe that this is the main reason why DVDs and TV monitors were included in the package that was provided to each ABC. When I was growing up in my village at Kagbantama, we used to have officials of the Ministry of Agriculture coming from time to time, particularly in the rainy season, to educate our parents about best farming practices using projectors and big screens that were mounted in public places. Those were moments that we cherished. And I am sure the idea behind the inclusion of DVDs and TV monitors in the package was to do just that. The question now is when the farmers are not benefiting from this, who else is benefiting?
Trainings
Before the ABCs were handed over to the FBOs, the government, with funds from the Food and Agriculture Organization and other development partners, facilitated and supported the training of hundreds of thousands of farmers that are members of the FFS across the country. The training focused mainly on leadership, group formation and management, gender and entrepreneurship. These themes were carefully chosen with the aim of equipping farmers with the necessary skills and knowledge that would enable them manage the ABCs effectively in a manner that they would spearhead development in their respective communities.
Has the ministry carried out an evaluation to assess the level to which those who benefited from the training on which hundreds of millions of leones were spent, were applying the knowledge and skills they acquired? Or was the focus only on training them and not on the changes the training would bring to their lives and the lives of their communities?
3.5 million farmers
I have no quarrels with the intent of the initiative. It was well-thought-out and highly ambitious. Rather, I am very much concerned about its implementation. Here is a programme targeting 3.5 million Sierra Leoneans who the minister in his statement at the launch said depended on smallholder farming to survive. 70 percent of them live below the poverty line. This programme gives them hope in the midst hopelessness. Can we again afford to dash their hopes to the rocks like did the Green Revolution of Joseph Saidu Momoh?
This aside, both Mr President and Mr Minister have used every available opportunity here in Sierra Leone and abroad to tout the SCP as one of the monumental achievements of the All People’s Congress government since it came to power in 2007. In fact, it was as a result of their vociferous campaign for increased investment in agriculture by African countries that the minister, Dr Sam Sesay, won the Special Award for the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) African Champion Agriculture Minister.
Huge success?
There is no disputing the fact that the ABCs are dotted across the length and breadth of the country; they are visible all over the place, as they are colourfully painted. And they stand out clearly in sharp contrast to the shanty houses in most of the rural communities where they are constructed. But is that all we want to see? Do the president and his minister want us to agree with them that the SCP is a huge success when, in fact, it is still to make any meaningful difference in the lives of poor rural farmers? Not at all! We totally disagree with you Sirs. Until the SCP is able to transform the lives of poor rural farmers for whom it was established and make them live in dignity, the programme will remain to be labeled as “another monumental failure” as was the case with the Green Revolution.
Deep reflection
Sometimes, I take a deep reflection on the SCP in my quiet moments. And each time I do, I am left wondering as to whether the drafters of the project really knew the poverty level of the farmers they would be dealing with. Imagine, requiring a rural farmer in the rainy season to part with no less than Le200,000 for a power tiller to plough just one acre of land, or to buy a bag of 50kg fertilizer at Le250,000.00. It is like building castles in the air. This is the time of the year that farmers within this bracket find it extremely difficult to even buy a few cups of rice to feed their families. Where does the ministry expect these farmers to raise money from to hire tractors?
Shattered dreams
This is why I believe it is high time the ministry and its partners did a thorough reflection of the programme thus far, with the view to identifying areas that they need to improve in order to move the process forward. Since its inception, the SCP has enjoyed and continues to enjoy tremendous support from various partners of the government. With such strong support, why should the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security want to once again shatter the dreams of about four million poverty-stricken compatriots of his?
It is time something is done. And it must be done fast, and done adequately!
