President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has reiterated her call for all Liberians to return to the soil and grow more food.
The President spoke today at the Samuel Kanyon Doe Sports Stadium in Paynesville at an official program marking the launch of the 'Back to the Soil' national agricultural campaign. She noted that while the international community is making efforts to tackle the global food crisis, it is expedient for Liberians to grow their own food, given the fertile land God has blessed the country with.
The Liberian leader has also ordered that all Government lands be made available throughout the country to be used for farm purposes, and she appealed to international partners to help Liberia in its quest to produce more food. The President further ordered the Ministry of Agriculture to deploy technicians in all 15 counties to help local inhabitants properly carry out productive farming.
Agriculture Minister Dr. J Chris Toe disclosed that the Government has taken several preliminary measures in an effort to fight the global food crisis. He stressed that it has put in place a waiver of all tariffs in the importation of rice and agricultural tools. Minister Toe added that his ministry has already put measures in place to establish warehouses in all 15 counties around the country and provide agricultural technicians to make the 'Back to the Soil' campaign a success.
The official launching of the 'Back to the Soil' national agricultural campaign was attended by thousands of Liberians including, senior officials of the three branches of Government, local Government officials and international partners.
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I must laud the president for inspiring Liberians about returning to the soil-to engage agricultural production. I grew up in a family who predominantly depended on subsistence farming for sustenance. My parents started taking me on the farm to help out when I was 7 years old. Fetching water for my brothers and sisters who were far older than me was my main task on the farm then. But I started getting directly involved in physical farming works at age 10. Well let me not bug you down with the point. Farming provided for all the 8 children of my parents including payment of our tuitions through high school. However, farming under such tedious manual but primitive means is inhumane in this modern day. In stead of the indigenous farmers clearing thousand acreages of forest land every year in search of fertile soil, a farmer with the right equipments or rudimentary-tractor, vehicle, fertilizers etc can or may farm on the same land for hundred years and produce 1000 percent more yields than the primitive manual but physically strenuous method. How do farmers get access to finance to procure these farm implements? We need land and farming finance law reform that will grand right to farmers to transform their squatting on the tribal land on which they farm into ownership. A farming finance law will allocate to banks a government incentives for those banks that loan to farmers with land ownership. These ownerships can then be used as collateral to get loans from the banks. Incentives such as writing off losses on farmers' default to pay or liquidate the loans as a consequence of natural disasters can be guaranteed to the risk-taking financial institutions. The president and the national legislature need to act now if we must transform words into deeds rather old political gimmicks or chicanery. Because these rhetorics never worked under previous Liberian leaders including but not limited to Tolbert and Doe and will not work now. So I must say "bravo" madam president. However. we need real action because that might help to attract Liberians both at home and in the diaspora to go back to the soil especially those with degrees in agriculture. Remember all of Liberians living in the non-metropolitan areas-rural hinder land are largely dependent on their physical labor in doing subsistence farming. Research buttress by the Ministry of Agriculture can be a tremendous help in regards to the transformation of the food production system in Liberia.