As I woke up this morning to listen to BBC's Network Africa news, I was informed of the visit by Liberia's Deputy Minister of Agriculture to Bangladesh. Liberia, is anxious to learn how to grow their staple food crop---rice. So many thoughts ran through my mind. Africa's premier research institution that works on rice was originally located in Liberia. Quite a bit of the work by what is known today as AfricaRice (originally known as The West African Rice Development Association or WARDA) on the famous NERICA rices was begun in Liberia. AfricaRice, one of the fifteen centers supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) has developed (and continues to develop) varieties of NERICA rice that are suited to Africa's growing conditions. It was not long ago in the 1980's when I was working for the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) that this organization was supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to help the government and people of Bangladesh to develop suitable fertilizer technologies for irrigated rice. The work involved helping the government of Bangladesh to support the promotion of the use of fertilizers, especially, urea to improve the production of urea. Today, the lessons learned by the people of Bangladesh from IFDC have enabled the country to produce sufficient rice for its over 100 million people. As the Director of IFDC-Africa, I actually led a delegation of Nigerian policy makers to learn how fertilizer subsidies worked in Bangladesh! Please don't ask me if any lessons learned were ever applied!!
I was thrilled that Liberia is prepared to let the farmers of Bangladesh teach the Liberian farmers how to produce rice. Literally all the rice that is produced in Bangladesh is under irrigation. To my knowledge, Liberia does not have the irrigation infrastructure to promote rice production. In the meantime, AfricaRice has developed several "upland" rice varieties that, if adopted, can increase rice production several fold in Liberia. But, planting the right variety of rice is but one little piece of the puzzle. Bangladesh was able to succeed because of the adoption of appropriate fertilizer use technologies. As the government of Liberia invites the rice producers of Bangladesh to come to assist the Liberian smallholder farmer, I just wonder what other policy changes on infrastructure, on processing and on access to markets are being envisaged or better still being promoted.
In July 2006, Africa's Heads of States and Governments met at the Africa Fertilizer Summit in Abuja, Nigeria and declared "fertilizer" as "strategic product without boundaries". It was the recognition by these leaders that food security in Africa would not be a realizable dream unless better care is taken of the most important asset that African farmers have--their soils..
Perhaps, it might just be advisable if the Deputy Minister of Agriculture looked closer at home for the solution to Liberia's problems?
No comments:
Post a Comment