Author: Dr. Saikou E. Sanyang
The agricultural sector is the main provider of food and income for rural women whose lives and livelihood activities depends on vegetable production for income generation. In the Gambia vegetable production is women domain in which 70% of the labour force is provided by women producers. It also contributes 4% to GDP of the country while serving as source of income for the producers. The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of the project on food and nutrition security, income and challenges faced by the vulnerable women farmers.
The MDG1c project was funded by European Union through Food and Agriculture Organization, registered outstanding achievements in supporting farmers to attain food and nutritional security, increase income and reduce poverty. Food and Agriculture Organization-MDG1c project deem it necessary to target the small holder farmers in order to achieve its laudable objectives. The small holder farmers were very instrumental in attaining food security as they produce volumes of food grains and vegetables. In the context of attaining food security, ownership, availability and accessibility to cultivable land is important to producers’ particularly women and youth folk.
The issue of capacity building in area of technology transfer and management skills of record keeping, entrepreneurship, group management and leadership, profit and loss accounting, savings, knowledge utilization, capital investment and diversity of activities all have been developed as sustainability measures to ensure continuity. Primarily, MDG 1c project has developed the concept of farming as business through commercialization of agriculture and value-addition an important strategy for project implementation.
In addition, the monetary value of sales increased tremendously of US$ 7,691 and US$ 122,056 US$ from onion and cabbage respectively. Furthermore, the women producers were not only engaged in vegetable production but also engaged in poultry production as additional sources of income. The poultry products of meat and eggs will improve the health status of women and children as source of protein while the by-product which is manure will enhance soil health condition. Moreover, effective networking that aims to inform women groups about government policies may have secondary benefits in terms of encouraging business women. Given the potentials of women in income generating activities, there is a need to introduce specific measures to enable women groups to communicate with their counterparts in the same locality.
Reasonably, for any rural development farmer groups need encouragement so that they can fully participate in decision making right from scooping, planning, implementation, monitoring and controlling of project activities. This will motivate and empower the farmers to have sense of ownership to embrace the success of the field activities implementation.
Furthermore, there should be incentives that would attract the youths and women folk to embrace agriculture not on small scale but on large scale through commercialization and value-addition. The formation of an umbrella producer cooperative of horticulture will help the groups to market their produce collectively and create better opportunities for the group members. Importantly, the premise of groups to open saving accounts at different financial institution a was steps in the right direction as it will help the groups to secure loans from financial institutions.
The farmer based organization accounts with reasonable monies would serve as spring board for the producer groups to continue with their production and business management activities. The women producers in the rural communities of the Gambia particularly upper river region have been encouraged and recently many of producers show interest to produce onions.
Implications for future intervention: The FAO-MDG1c project under the purview of EU as the donor, made significant progress in helping the small holder farmers to catapult their food and nutritional security, increase income and reduce poverty in upper river region of the Gambia. In addition, for future intervention by FAO and/or development partner, there is need to open the flood gates to other communities who were not part of MDG1c project as replica of the model. Moreover, triangular linkage between the small-holder farmers, extension and research, more efforts are needed to strengthen services of the relevant stakeholders.
In this way, the local research base and conventional method of getting new ideas and innovation should be recognized at macro-level of the government structure. Primarily, for future projects that would be under the purview of FAO, should practice the Food Security through Commercialization of Agriculture (FCSA) The model constituted (i) production component/agronomist, (ii) group management component (iii) food technology component (iv) business component. With this model, the FSCA project registered tremendous success in the intervention sites as there was degree of specialization from different expertise at field level. Furthermore, the author strongly recommends the monitoring and evaluation unit need to be handled by highly trained expert who specializes in motoring and evaluation.
Implications for policy and practice: Certainly, the government, donor agencies, NGOs and other relevant stakeholders can use the model of MDG1c for any possible intervention. The information will in no doubt assist the stake holder in their fight to reduce poverty, increase income and improve the livelihood of the small holder farmers. Ultimately, if other development project wants to achieve their set of development goals it is equally important to address the issue of simple farming tools, seeds and fertilizer, and capacity building as a case in point of MDG1c project.
This document will further help the government to develop and formulate policies and programmes that are workable addressing issues that affects the yield potentials of small holder farmers. In summary, policies need to be appropriate that would bring change in the livelihood of these communities ensuring the health of small-holders farmers are maintained
Implications for farmer based organization: The small holder farmers are pivotal and serve an engine of economic growth as primary investors in propelling country’s economy. Notably, a formidable and better organized farmer based organization can produce agricultural commodities in volumes both quantity and quality, thus reducing food and nutritional insecurity in the rural communities of upper river region.
The women vegetable growers said that, they closely worked with the extension worker who gives technical advice, resulting to adaption and utilization of best agricultural technologies. Nursery bed preparation, transplanting and method of fertilizer application are all techniques producers adopted. Vegetable growers’ associations and/or cooperatives need to double their efforts to come up with strong, functional and viable vegetable producer’s cooperatives that will be responsive to the needs of producers.
In conclusion, there is continuity of active vegetable production in these two schemes as well as other MDG1c vegetable schemes in the respective regions.
