ZAYGLAY, Nimba – After receiving a generator in December 2017 as their first donation from the USAID-funded Liberia Agribusiness Development Activity project, the Khodo Farmers’ Cooperative in Zayglay, Nimba has received a farm tractor to boost their farming activities.

The presentation was made by Victor Ngorbu, LADA’s co-investment fund manager, on behalf of LADA’s chief of party, Wim Van Campen. Ngorbu said the tractor was worth US$56,000.

LADA, which began in 2015, is a US$20 million project that aims to increase the incomes of smallholder farmers and entrepreneurs.

Ngorbu noted that the project aims to strengthen different actors within the sector, including farmers and processors. He said the nation’s 14-year civil unrest rendered Liberia vulnerable in terms of food security, and LADA is focusing on food production to make the nation food secured.

“We did our assessment in Nimba and came up to identify three groups that are doing very well in rice production in Nimba,” he said, naming the Khodo Farmers’ Cooperative, the Gbehlay-Geh Rural Women Multipurpose Cooperative, and the Dokondan Farmers’ Cooperative.

Ngorbu said LADA’s support to Khodo was a result of a gap identified during their assessment of the cooperative’s needs.

“We noticed that people were still using the regular hoe to dig the field; we saw power trailers here, but they were all old, and not functional anymore,” he said.

LADA is also soon expected to present a rice mill with the capacity of processing eight metric tons of clean rice in a single day.

Featured photo by Arrington Ballah