With Poor Farming System Can President Bio Feed the Nation?
Sierra Leone is a country blessed with fertile soil where food crops could thrive well but yet still our people are going to bed with empty stomach because successive Governments had failed to improve the sector but depend on imported food stuff to feed their hungriest people.
That prompted me to ask, how President Retired Brigadier Julius Maada Bio’s Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) led Government could feed the entire nation when we still depend on imported food stuffs?.
Recently, after the SLPP had won the March 31st Presidential Run-off, we heard rumour that the Government will soon import ships of rice to be sold in reduced price instead of empowering our farmers for massive production of local food stuffs.
A country cannot feed itself when majority of agriculturists depend on subsistence farming system wherein, farmers cultivate food crops only to feed him and family members and not to be presented in the market for sale.
It is therefore advisable that President Bio’s Government should now commercialize the agriculture sector so that food can be produce abundantly for sale in the market rather than depending on importing food to feed millions of people.
Lack of modern tools like tractor, hatchery, plough, harrower, among others has contributed to the backwardness of food productivity which means, the current administration should procure machineries because man power don’t have the required ability to produce quantified food with the use of native tools like hoe, knife, shovel, pick axe and onwards.
In ancient days, food was flourished because farming was seen as a job for the elite but today, no one wanted to be called a farmer but sought to work in offices with air-condition while poor farmers are using their physical force with outdated tools to work on their farms.
We must believe as a nation that, food sufficiency cannot be achieved in office but in the remote areas where agriculture is highly practiced. When Ex-President Koroma took over Governance, he appointed Dr. Sam Sesay as Minister of Agriculture Forestry and Food Security (MAFFS) and later replaced by Professor Patrick Monty Jones to achieve his desire to make food available but to no avail.
That is why citizens are asking if the current Government would appoint a Minister of Agriculture that can mount robust monitoring against authorities responsible to make food available so that Sierra Leoneans will have food on the table and stop going to bed with empty stomach.
By Abdulai Mento Kamara
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