Fendall, Montserrado County – The National Coordinator of the Farmers’ Union Network of Liberia, Julius Momolu Bass has called on national government to render more support to the agriculture sector of Liberia.
Report by Gerald C. Koinyeneh, [email protected]
Mr. Bass said one of the best ways government can support the sector is to implement the Maputu Protocol which calls on African Union member states to allocate ten percent of the national budget to agriculture development and the Malabo Declaration.
In June 2014, African leaders met in Malabo where they, among other actions, adopted the Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods. This Declaration is framed around a half dozen key commitments to transform agriculture across the continent over the next decade.
At the Second Ordinary Assembly of the African Union in July 2003 in the Mozambique capital of Maputo, African Heads of State and Government endorsed the Maputo Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security in Africa.
The Declaration contained several important decisions regarding agriculture, but prominent among them was the commitment to the allocation of at least 10 percent of national budgetary resources to agriculture and rural development policy implementation within five years.
But Bass said since the declaration 15 years ago, the government of Liberia at that time and successive ones have not done enough towards implementing it.
Speaking to reporters at the head office of the Farmers Union Network in Fendell recently, he revealed that the Network has embarked on holding series of consultations with farmers across eight of the 15 counties of Liberia with the aim of deriving at a set of recommendations for onward submission to central government to induce policy change in the agriculture landscape of Liberia.
According to him, the project was made possible through a grant of US$143,000 from the Open Society Initiatives for West Africa (OSIWA) and will be implemented in Bomi, Bong, Grand Cape Mount, Grand Bassa, Lofa, Margibi, Montserrado and Nimba Counties.
He added that owing to the low budgetary allotments to the agriculture sector, there was a need to engage policymakers through robust advocacy to draw their attention.
“Advocacy is important because it deals directly with the issues and not confrontational. I feel that our farmers should get involved with advocacy to see how some of these policies can be changed for the general good of this country so that the issue of food security can be addressed because if we are not food secured, then we are doomed. A country that does not feed itself is doomed to become slave to people that feed it,” he stated.
Speaking further, the Farmers Union Network of Liberia’s Coordinator revealed that the major issues being flagged out by farmers include the Maputo Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security and the ten percent national budget allocation to agriculture development.
He added that farmers want duty-free privileges on the importation of all farming materials including fertilizers and implements, affordable agriculture loan with low-interest rate and the localization of all domestic production.
“Farmers don’t have an asset to loan. If you go to the bank, they want you to give collateral. How much collateral does a farmer have? So, these are the issue that are coming up as a result of the consultation we are having around the country,” he added