By Mariama Jallow
The Department of Agriculture, through the National Agricultural Land and Water Management Development Project (Nema)/Building Resilience Against Food and Nutrition Insecurity in the Sahel (P2RS project), had on Tuesday, handed over 94 shine hoes, and 100 sickles to the Regional Agricultural Directors for NBR, CRR North and South and URR for onward deliveries to the findi farmers in their various regions.
The farming tools, meant to boost findi {Digitaria exilis} production and productivity in the Gambia, would be distributed to the beneficiaries of the project, namely Upper River Region, Central River Region South and North, and North Bank Region, respectively.
Presiding over the official handing over ceremony, Director General of the Department of Agriculture, Dr. Saikou E. Sanyang lauded the gesture, saying this couldn’t not come at a better time than now as farmers always complain about farming implements. He thanked the agricultural projects like Nema, FASDEP, and others for always responding to the needs of farmers.
The DoA boss believed the materials would go a long way in helping farmers on their timely operations in the farms, increase their income generation in findi production and other crops.
DG Sanyang commended the Nema/ P2RS project for supporting findi production in CRR-North and South; URR, and NBR, noting that findi prices are very high now in the market.
Also speaking at the ceremony, Mr. Famara Trawally, Regional Agriculture Director for CRR/South said the Nema/P2RS project is an African Development Bank (AfDB) and Gambia Government funded project managed by Nema project.
He informed the audience that the project has been helping the DoA in two key intervention areas, namely capacity building for farmers and provision of input to farmers.
Director Trawally again: “The project is a resilience project; it came because we are in the era of climatic change to build the resilience of affected countries or the vulnerable people like The Gambia.”
He intimated that findi had been here for long time, but it died. As a result, P2RS came to revise that kind of intervention to supply a lot of findi, train farmers and and eventually give them findi, in order to produce more of it for the country.
