SANNIQUELLIE, Nimba – USAID’s Food and Enterprises Development Initiative has ended a one-day consultative meeting with farmers and farmers’ groups from Bein-Garr, Sanniquellie-Mahn and Gbeh-ley Geh districts in Sanniquellie.

The FED initiative was meant to acquaint beneficiaries about the initiative’s drawdown plans scheduled for Sept. 2016. Following the meeting, farmers associated with FED projects expressed their appreciation for the organization’s support and the cordial working relationship they had over the time.

Luogon P. Lah, the executive director of the Agriculture Relief Services, an organization that works directly with farmers in Nimba on improving farming methodology, said:

“We’ve been expecting it that FED will one day go. All we can tell them is farewell, and we hope that the new group that is coming will do everything possible to increase assistance to our farmers so that they can improve productivity in the County.”

Lah who is also a member of the Nimba NGO Network, told reporters that the biggest problem facing farmers’ production is that they lack the market to sell their produce after harvest.

“Most of our farmers produced last year and this year, and those products are still there and getting spoilt because of the lots of imported rice on the market; so the farmers are not able to sell their rice,” he said.

Feed the Future Liberia Agribusiness Development Activity project, commonly known as LADA, is expected to take over from FED.

Lah used the occasion to call on LADA to concentrate on exploring avenues to enable farmers to get their produce to market. He expressed a concern that LADA, from initial interactions with the farmers, is mostly concerned with commercialization.

“This is something we have not seen from LADA, reaching the farmers on the field like FED used to do; but what we see is that they are mostly concern about commercialization,” he said.

For her part, the president of the Rural Women Organization in Nimba County, Annie Kruah, said her organization would miss FED for what they have helped them become.

“FED going! What will I do? I feel fine but, we will miss them.” she said. “We will miss them because they brought help to a lot of the women in doing something for ourselves.”

According to Kruah, the partnership with FED was rewarding. She said over the time; FED provided her group with capacity building workshops and a grant for the women to run their individual businesses through the Village Savings and Loan Association, a component of the project.

Kruah also used the occasion to call on LADA to expand in all parts of the county at places where the FED projects were being carried out. She added, “Let them reach [out] to all the women FED was working with – VSLA and farmers. My group is not the only group FED was working with.”

Featured photo by Arrington Ballah