By Mamadou Edrisa Njie
If provided with the necessary support, from projects, government or philanthropists, women farmers with smaller farm sizes would have the possibilities of expanding their land spaces, in their drive to improve livelihoods, a student gardener, Ms. Jainaba Damba, intimated to Mansa Banko Online in an interview conducted at the women’s garden in Basse Kabakama, Upper River Region (URR) .
Targeting smallholder farmers could give a better Cost-benefit ratio, and also contribute more to poverty mitigation with the support of quality seeds, fertilizer and water supply.
In increasing productivity, she recommended that, giving training to women on agricultural techniques and a follow-up by extension workers, should be more encouraged.
Basse Kabakama, in the Upper River Region of The Gambia, is where Jainaba Damba, an 18-year-old Grade 11 student at St Georges Senior Secondary School is doing vegetable production to make a living.
With the four beds in her garden, she’s able to live in a better life by buying school learning materials for herself as a young student with the ambition to becoming a responsible and productive citizen of this small West African nation.
While calling on young Gambians to venture into agriculture, she emphasized that agriculture is not only for elderly people or school drop-outs.
“I can vouch that with only four beds, I am able to buy my learning materials and I am focusing on my education. And as a result, I have never failed my examinations since I was enrolled in the school.
“I see farming as business, because with farming, I’m buying my learning materials as well as buy food at school and this has eased the burden on my parents,” the rising young female farmer-cum-student informed.
Mrs. Hawa Touray is another gardener who spoke with Mansa Banko Online, at the Kabakama Women’s garden. She has been working in the garden for the past seven years, and grows onions, okra, tomatoes among other varieties of vegetables, albeit, not without numerous constraints faced.
Elaborating on the challenges, Touray pointed to water supply and availability of seeds as their major constraints. But with the help of the government and agricultural projects and individuals, she’s optimistic that their livelihoods would improve.
Madam Touray put the number of women working in that garden and making ends meet daily, from their harvest, at four hundred and twenty (420).
Further outlining the challenges, she cited marketing as another factor that is hindering the progress of their business establishments, lamenting that many a time, their produce would perish due to lack of proper market. Both women and young girls are working in the Basse Kabakama garden, in order to earn their living from the harvest of their produce, as she said.
Mrs. Touray, however, acknowledged, “We have some young boys in the garden who sometimes help their parents, while others have their own beds.”
Also speaking to Mansa Banko Online was Mrs. N’dmbo Jallow, a 40-year-old gardener, who made a passionate appeal for philanthropists to come to their aid, so that they could get good water supply, which “is a big problem in the garden”.
Jallow has been working in the garden for over seven years now, and she disclosed that they work there from morning to evening without adequate water supply.
Dilating more on their ordeal, she pointed out that during the rainy season, the gardeners work strenuously in the garden, but in the dry season, “they are disturbed by livestock intrusion”, hence, the pressing need for a fence to protect the garden.
Jallow is of the strong view that with a fenced garden, adequate water supply, and availability of fertilizers and seeds, their production capacity would no doubt, be enhanced.
Saying they sell their produce at the Basse market, she decried the harvest losses; adding they have lots of vegetables but some of the gardeners who could not finish selling their vegetables at the market would either return home with the remnants, or sell them at giveaway prices.
The Kabakama gardener, through this media interview, called on the government of President Adama Barrow and agricultural projects in the country, to help them with storage facilities, so as to preserve their garden produce.
A 25-year-old Ms. Mama Ceesay, who owns 10 beds in the said garden, attributed their low productivity to the soil infertility. In her words, the soil nutrients are not good.
Mrs. Hawa Touray at the Kabakama Women’s garden posed with Mansa Banko Publisher/Managing Editor
