Gambia: FAO Community Farm Projects Register Success

The Daily Observer (Banjul)

Musa Ndow

13 July 2011

As the presidential motorcade drove through the entrance of Barra Ferry Terminal Monday, marking the beginning of the 2011 ‘Dialogue with the people tour’ over 50 women were spotted displaying produce harvested from the Food Security Through Commercial Agriculture project in Barra, to show their solidarity and appreciation to President Jammeh for giving great priority to agriculture.

The produce, which are proceeds harvested from the “One Village One Product” project concept was facilitated by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) funded by the Italian government in The Gambia. It is one of the seven projects within the sub-region and exists in two communities in the North Bank Region (NBR) and the Central River Region (CRR) North.

The national project manager of the FSCA project, Amie Jallow-Jatta told this reporter that the project started last year as one of seven projects in the sub-region. She explained that it is a three-year project run by the community under the supervision of FAO. Jallow-Jatta disclosed that FAO will handover the project to the community after the three-year time frame. “Our primary role in the project is to supervise and build the capacity of the community after which they would own the project and be responsible for its sustenance. 40 communities are benefiting from the project in both NBR and CRR North,” she further explained.

Mariatou Faal-Njie, the assistant FAO country representative was also spotted among the women farmers. She explained that the project intends to boost and encourage commercial agriculture, instead of farmers limiting themselves to only subsistence farming. This, according to her will also help farmers to develop value agricultural farming. She disclosed that the concept was a practice in Japan, while the Gambian system was copied from Asia.

Modou Manneh, agricultural assistant to the women farmers revealed that the four-hectare land area generated over 20 tones of onion during the season. He hinted that they want to expand in the next season. He said they recently participated in a mini-trade fair at the UN House in Cape Point, Bakau where they sold about 1000 bags of onion produced from the project farm.

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