NYEHN, Todee – Matthew Wamah is well known in this area for cultivating big plots of land, and making big money from his harvest. Now 49 years old, he started farming alongside his late mother at the age of 20 and has easily supported his family of seven children for thirty years. But even for one of this area’s most successful farmers, the last five years have been dire.
Wamah and fellow farmers here told New Narratives/FPA that they are experiencing some of the worst farming they have ever experienced because of a growing problem of pests. Between 20 to 40 percent of global crop production is now lost to pests such as fungi, bacteria, viruses, insects, and worms according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. Liberia’s farmers are on the frontline.
By Evelyn Kpadeh Seagbeh – With New Narratives
“These pests damage our crops to the extent that within one week, it can damage more than two thousand trees and it can leave us with empty hands,” says Warmah who farms pepper, cucumber, okra, cabbage, and bitter ball.
Already, erratic rainfall and higher temperatures brought by climate change are making farming hard. Now a battle against pest infestation is increasing the burden.
Experts say climate change is responsible for this new threat. Rising temperatures and changing habitats are providing ideal environments for these pests to multiply according to Agriculture expert and agronomist Mr. Theophilus Bah of the Small Holder Transformation and Agro-Business Revitalization Project (STAR-P) at the Ministry of Agriculture. As insects swarm from warmer regions near the equator, they branch out to new locations that they would have previously found too cold. Liberia’s rain forest is very attractive to migrating bugs.
“As a result of climate change, a lot of environmental factors are being influenced,” says Bah. “There are higher temperatures. There are changes in rainfall patterns and it rains at a time you do not expect it to be falling so the changes that are linked to climate change can lead to pests and disease infestation.”
Farmers in Liberia, with low tech farming practices, are particularly vulnerable.
“Farmers who are mostly unsophisticated when it comes to dealing with these issues of climate change feel the impacts of climate change hugely in terms of production losses,” says Jonathan Stewart, executive director of Agro Tech Liberia, a Liberian non-for-profit organization surveying the effects of pest infestation on farmers. “Pest infestation is one of the major causes for the decline in the income of farmers and their wellbeing.”
The National Disaster Management Agency’s September 2023 situation report named pest infestation as one of four disaster incidents recorded across the country. The NDMA gathered information on pest infestation in fifty-four towns and across six counties – Lofa, Nimba, Rivercess, Gbarpolu, Bong, and Bomi. It says “pest infestation as an emerging hazard in Liberia.”
Scientists from the Central Agriculture Research Institute (CARI), which became the first responder, organized 32 emergency teams equipped with chemical and bio-pesticides and motorized spray to halt infestation and minimize the damage to crops and affected farms.
But that support has not reached all areas. Here in Todee farmers say they are getting no support from any group or government to help them with the necessary materials or chemicals to fight pests.
“When we plant, our plant can be attacked by disease, so other NGOs came to us and they trained us but they made us understand that they are not able to help us with these diseases medicine,” says Wamah.
With no good solutions, farmers, desperate for solutions, have resorted to applying pesticides from the local market. Six years ago, Wamah said they applied pesticides to their garden every 14 days, but nowadays the increasing pest disease, they now spray pesticides every week .
But the Agriculture Ministry executive has voiced concerns over the excessive use of insecticides and pesticides by farmers warning that such usage, without expert guidance could pollute water sources, destroy the soil, and harm human health.
“it is a serious challenge for our farmers. There are different kinds of [pests], and every one of them can be controlled both naturally and biologically, but farmers should always apply agro-chemical as their last result when nothing else works,” says Bah.
Teta Stubblefield, 42, a single mother of four children farms to educate, feed, and look after her children. The past three bad farming seasons Stubblefield have pushed her to the verge of quitting, but she is also worried about how she and her children will survive. Farming is the only thing she knows.
Under the blazing sunshine, sweat rolls down Teta’s forehead as she points to her withering three thousand seedlings of bitter ball. She says not a single bag was harvest from this farm because the plants were damaged.
Environmental experts from the Ministry of Agriculture who visited farms in this area said biggest threats are what’s known as Nematodes and fungus diseases. These pests come from beneath the ground. Their attack is invisible. They rot the plants from the roots, then gradually wither, and kill them.
“For the past four years, we have been experiencing this disease throughout, but now it is worse,” says Teta.
Like many other farmers here Teta does not know if the chemicals they are purchasing from the local markets have changed anything. She is desperate for help.
“We need them [experts] to come and help us to treat our farms for us because we don’t have the hand to support our farms and because we don’t have the medicine (chemical) to treat it. The whole farm damaged in our hands.”
Farmers losses are mounting. For Wamah things are becoming desperate. To help recover some of his losses from his past two failed farms Wamah took a loan $LD100,000 from BRAC Liberia, the local branch of the international microcredit organization, in March 2023 to invest in a bigger farm, pay labor costs and buy seedlings. Now that farm has failed too. Wamah now must pay back the $50,000 he lost, at a 25 percent interest rate.
With no alternative for income Wamah has turned to charcoal burning just next to his farm. He knows cutting down trees and creating charcoal will have an environmental and climate impact. But he says he has no choice. He is disillusioned.
“Brac gave us the money to improve our farms, but we planted farms two times and the farm failed us,” Wamah says. “Every time they (donors & government) will come and give us hoes and shovels they will say we should farm to live on our own, but how will we make it when the diseases are giving us a hard time?”
Francis P. Stewart’s his farm is also suffering both nematodes and fungus disease. He is also stressed about repaying his $LD100,000 BRAC loan.
Stewart says this year he has harvested less than 60% of what he harvested in 2019. A five-acre pepper or bitter ball farms in 2019 would earn him more than $LD150,000, but now from the same plot of land, his harvest earns him just $LD65,000.
“All the plants we are planting right now, it can attack it. It is too serious,” says Stewart. “It’s serious to the extent that I want to forget about farming and go back to the city because we are making the farm and not benefiting.”
As the crisis for Liberia’s farmers and those across the Sahel grows experts say rich countries are not acting with the urgency needed. Negotiators at this year’s global climate change conference in the UAE– COP 28 – made landmark progress when major donors committed $US500M to pay for losses and damages caused by climate to help hard-hit or less developed countries. But it’s a tiny fraction of what is needed. Loss and damage in developing countries is already estimated to be greater than $US400 billion. All of Africa contributes just 4 percent of global carbon emissions, according to the UN Environment Program.
Liberian and international experts are now concerned that efforts to eliminate carbon emissions and the funding to help countries adapt will not happen fast enough to stave off mass starvation and political instability across the region.
This story was a collaboration with New Narratives as part of its Climate, Land, and Water Justice Project. Funding was provided by the American Jewish World Service. The funder had no say in the story’s content.