1,500 women acquire skills in vegetable and poultry production

A project consultant for the Food and Agriculture Organization or FAO, Norrie Sam, is partnering with the Ministry of Agriculture to enhance farmers’ capacity to sustain production of vegetables. The project lasts for 15 months.

She told a local radio station in Monrovia that the project targets urban farmers in poultry and vegetable production, specifically in Montserrado and Margibi Counties, noting that it is being implemented in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture. Mrs. Sam notes that they are targeting 1,500 women farmers, within 12 communities in rural Montserrado.

She stresses that women play a very important role in farm development and they are the ones who usually face lot of challenges in establishing gardens.“It is important that we look after the women because they face a lot of problems in farming, and they are mostly the ones, who find food for the family to eat, we help them so that the entire household can make adequate farming products”, she says 

“Bulk of our production as it relates to vegetable is done is urban areas so that we have a challenge with supply of vegetables and poultry products on the market. By helping the farmers to overcome the challenges to reduce constraint that they face, we are going to ensure the continuous supply of vegetables throughout the market”, she explains.

She adds that in ensuring that, they will have to carry out farmer’s school training program, which is a methodology that encourages farmers to discuss amongst themselves challenges and ways in handling them.

Madam Sam continues that the project has officers assigned in the field “to the people we are working with to monitor them from the beginning of the farming up to harvesting.” She this is necessary to measure was previously produced against current production after the intervention.

By Ethel A. Tweh