By Lamin Kujabi
The Resilience organizations for Transformative Small holder Agriculture Projects (ROOTS) was launched by the president of The Republic of the Gambia presidentAdama Barrow on the 9th February 2021
The main goal of ROOTS is to improve food security, nutrition, and resilience of smallholder farmers to climate change in The Gambia. Its development objective is to increase agricultural productivity and access to markets for enhanced food security, nutrition and the resilience of families and farming organizations. To achieve its objectives, the project supports targeted investments in infrastructure and the technical capacities of farmer’s organization, particularly youth and women.
Rural development can be a powerful force for change when it includes and empowers poor rural women and men. Economic growth on its own does not change lives – but investing in the resilience and market participation of small-scale producers can make a lasting difference.
To farm successfully, smallholders need secure access to land and water, affordable electricity, better access to financial services, paved roads and transportation to get their products to market, and access to technology for up-to-date and reliable market information. They also need to be linked to functioning markets so that they have an incentive to invest in improving production
Gambia Daily sat with Mamour Alieu Jagne, the Project Director of the ROOTS Project in his office at the Department of Live Stock Service Veterinary Complex, Abuko.
Giving an insight of their activites Mr Jagne explained that they have made progress in the setting up systems and structures that made the project functional but also admitted that they are still faced with some challenges in some aspects. He noted that they have made progress in establishing functional regional offices and a regional steeringcommittee that would make it easy for them to reach their target beneficiaries. He further explained they are working on finishing 17 gardens that were left by the NEMA project and out of the 17, six are operational now.
To minimize post-harvest losses from the vegetable gardens, the director said the ROOT SProject has started construction of cold storage facilities around the country, and so far, they have constructed three. He added that they plan to construct 15 cold storage facilities.
He also highlighted that in rice production, they have not yet started the infrastructural development, but are at advanced stage on preparatory work to identify potential areas. This is on going with support and engagement of local communities to ensuring the availability of land and to find out what sort of intervention or support they need.
He said the other area they made considerable progress is the establishment of farmer field schools which are meant to impact knowledge to the farmers in agronomy practices in order to maximize their yield.
“In adult literacy and numeracy,’’ he continued, “we are in 12 communities around the country as a start to train them to be able to record and calculate their yield and to be able to read as well as use that skill they acquired . It is an intervention that is well appreciated in the rural area’’, he noted
He further explained that the sub-component one of the Root Project is about infrastructural development for rice and vegetable production.
“I can say that the infrastructural development takes about half of the project cost which is over 40 million Dollars. He added that the project seeks to improve rice production with the view to minimize importation ,’’ he said.
“Ultimately, we are working with small scale farmers individually and groups to empower them to enhance their revenue generation and improve the standard of living,’’ he noted.
Mr. Jagne stated that he look forward to the days when he goes to the average supermarket and food stores he sees Gambian bags of rice.
“At the end of the project, we should be able to have rice that can compete with the imported rice brands. If we are able to achieve that in adequate quantities, in my opinion, the project would have succeeded in that area,’’ he said.
He also highlighted that Roots Project has allocated 2800 hectares of land in Jahally Pacharr and the rest will be around the country. “After JahallyPacharr, our main focus will be Upper River Region, Juruku area in North Bank Region and Toyataba in the Lower River Region. The intervention is demand deriving so we are calling on local communities that are producing rice or that are interested in rice production to to send their application,’’ he said.
He admitted that the private sector has a huge role to play, especially in the marketing side, while The Gambia Chamber of Commerce has a prominent role to play when it comes to the marketing of agricultural products.
