Food Security

In Koromasilaya, the farmers give a percentage of their yield to the town chief as rent.

In Sierra Leone, food insecurity is one of the country's most pressing issues--but fortunately, it's also one of the country's most solvable problems. Organizations like CARE International are working with communities to create stable sources of food, and there has already been substantial success in achieving greater food security for Sierra Leone.

One factor contributing to food insecurity in Sierra Leone involves land ownership practices. In this country, complex and unclear rules for land ownership sometimes allow individuals to own and sell land freely but often prohibit land from being sold to anyone outside of the immediate family, making it difficult for farmers to buy large areas of land. Some individuals lend their land to local farmers and receive rent, but the requirement to renew contracts every season reduces the economic viability of this practice. This requirement makes it impossible for renting farmers to plant crops that take more than one season to grow, which means that farmers cannot grow lucrative tree crops such as coffee.

One factor contributing to food insecurity in Sierra Leone involves: land ownership practices. In this country, complex and unclear rules for land ownership would sometimes allow individuals to own and sell land freely but often prohibit land from being sold to anyone outside of the immediate family, making it difficult for farmers to buy large areas of land. Some individuals lend their land to local farmers and receive rent, but the requirement to renew contracts every season reduces the economic viability of this practice. This requirement makes it impossible for renting farmers to plant crops that take more than one season to grow, meaning farmers cannot grow lucrative tree crops such as coffee.

Burned fields in Kabala district.

Also contributing to food insecurity are destructive farming practices like slash and burn. Slash and burn is a very common practice in which the forest is totally cleared with fire. The burning covers the bare ground in ash which serves as a fertilizer. At first, grass or crops can grow on burned land thanks to the nutrients found in the ash, but once the ash has blown away--sometimes even before the soil even absorbs the nutrients--the soil has no source of nutrients and is left stripped and useless. Farmers must wait years to allow the land to recover. Sometimes these fires will spread into other areas, especially during the dry season. Slash and burn becomes a huge problem in villages that are positioned next to each other but have different lifestyles (for example, one focuses on breeding cattle and the other on growing vegetables), because the fire is often unstoppable and spreads to others farms and villages. Throughout Sierra Leone, we observed large areas of ashes where villagers had burned land so that their cattle could graze on newly-grown grass or so that they could grow crops quickly.

Another problem is that poor farmers suffer from a lack of capital to invest in their farms. Farmers in Dogoloya, for example, could not afford any mechanized equipment for their fields. Although some villages have a tractor owned by the chief and shared by the entire community, this is unusual. Instead, all work has to be done by hand, taking up a great deal of time and energy and making food more expensive. Once crops are harvested, Sierra Leoneans face the problem of having to process food by hand as well--another time consuming process. Small, inexpensive grinding machines can reduce the processing time of cassava roots dramatically, for example, but most communities cannot afford these machines.

Heavy rainy seasons cause bumpy roads, discouraging the private sector to improve local transportation system.

There are other problems not directly associated with food that still contribute to the problem of food insecurity in Sierra Leone. The first is the poor condition of transportation infrastructure in the country. The roads are mostly in very poor condition, the public transportation system is unreliable, and many villages are still so remote that no one can access them if they don't walk on foot. Most people walk to the cities, but as they can’t carry many crops in to the city that way, most of their harvest just sits in the village, unsold and unused until it becomes stale. Some people walk for days with as much as they can carry on their head to go to big cities. Often when people arrive at their destinations, the harvest is no longer fresh and so they earn little money for their produce. To rent a truck is not an option because the price is so unreasonably expensive. Groups like CARE therefore, help communities rehabilitate existing roads and bring markets closer to farmers.

The final factor contributing to food insecurity is the migration of young people to urban areas in large numbers. When civil war started in Sierra Leone, the education system collapsed. Many youths stopped receiving education for more than a decade. Now they are too old to go back and the government does not have enough money or resources to give them practical training and provide them with jobs. These youths are reluctant to go back to their villages because there are no opportunities for them there aside from farming, but there aren't opportunities in the cities either. Without young people, farms in Sierra Leone's vast countryside suffer from lack of adequate labor.

A farmer field school in Makeni.

CARE engages in a comprehensive program of projects to combat the causes of food insecurity in Sierra Leone and help create more stable sources of food throughout the country. First, CARE holds farmer field schools in villages. Here farmers can come together and learn about good farming practices from CARE staff and from each other. They can practice growing different types of crops on an experimental farming field. CARE divides these fields into many parts, where farmers plant various crops using different techniques and soils to see which ones produce the best results. CARE discourages the use of expensive, polluting chemicals in these schools and instead encourages sustainable farming practices.

Women in Bo working with cassava-processing machines.

Second, CARE trains youth and women in food processing. CARE helps young people--especially marginalized youth with many relatives and a very low income--purchase small machines that process fruit and vegetables which youth then can or bottle to sell. The youth process the yield from local farms that are so isolated that farmers there otherwise would not be able to sell their harvest. CARE also trains women in food processing. Women are spared hours of tedious work when they are provided more efficient machines and heating stovetops for processing cassava, for example. The proceeds they make from selling the processed cassava can be used to support their families, thus improving the health of themselves and their children.

Third, CARE helps villages build infrastructure to improve food security. CARE works with other agencies to supervise food-for-work programs that allow villagers to rehabilitate and expand roads. This allows farmers to more easily transport produce to marketplaces. CARE also provides funding and support for villages to build both permanent and seasonal markets where villages can come together to sell produce locally rather than transferring all goods to bigger cities. CARE helped a community in Makeni, for example, build a local market called a lumo--made of materials from the surrounding environment--through a food-for-work program. Now instead of walking fifteen miles just to sell food, this community can trade in their own local, permanent market. CARE also helps villages build drying floors, used to dry produce, that are twice the size of the floors for which government subsidies usually pay. Finally, CARE assists villages in building artificial fish ponds. These ponds provide a reliable source of protein for villages at a low cost.

CARE staff members are optimistic about the future of food security in Sierra Leone. As the country's economy grows and CARE works with more villages, fewer Sierra Leoneans will have to suffer from hunger. One important long-term question to consider in Sierra Leone's development is whether or not it would be beneficial for large-scale, corporate, industrial agriculture to develop in the country. CARE staff with whom we spoke said that they believed the growth of large-scale, community-based agriculture would prove more beneficial for individual Sierra Leonean wage earners and farmers.