Miles Away From Food Security … Probe the Food Ministry!
It is long overdue for the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) to have probed the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security (MAFFS) on why and how most of the series of Agricultural Business Centers (ABCs) across the country have almost gone defunct.
There is every necessity for an urgent probe into the circumstances leading to the dramatic collapse of our ABCs which government, in collaboration with the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), established right through this hungry nation to help achieve our much-desired food sufficiency.
The deteriorated state of our ABCs is a worrisome development, especially when the country continues to face a high increase in the price of our main staple food, rice, which now goes for about 150.000 Leones per bag and a tiny plate of cookery going for 2. 000 Leones.
Needless to say that government is still several miles away from its much-desired food sufficiency or food security, otherwise, the price of rice and other basic food commodities would not have been catapulting.
Beside the countless ABCs, several tractors have been distributed to many farmers to produce rice and other food items but the move has still not yielded the required dividend as the nation continues to suffer from food insecurity.
President Kabba promised us that by 2007, “no Sierra Leonean will go to bed on hungry stomach.” However, the promise turned out to be a mere political bombast as by 2007, the country became hungrier and now we have been ranked as the hungriest nation on planet Earth.
In Sierra Leone nowadays, many poor homes cannot afford to cook and eat square meal at home, little wonder the booming cookery industry. Yet the Food Ministry keeps saying that there is enough food in the markets. Yes, there is enough food in the markets but how many Sierra Leoneans can easily afford it. If food was in abundance, it would have been very cheap according to the demand and supply law of economics.
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