The visit marks his third move to the provinces after having a comprehensive look on agricultural activities in the Western Area Urban and Rural, Northern and Southern Province respectively.
In his statement to farmers, Professor Patrick Monty Jones said that they as farmers must increase production and productivity of not only crops, but livestock all inclusive.
With farmers still stock on producing minimal amount of goods from the farm on a daily basis, this the Minister said the only time they as a ministry would feel satisfied is when farmers multiply their tones per harvest.
Sierra Leone has been static on the production scale for far too long, he commented, while cautioning all to see the need for a more productive agricultural system that would enable them to be rich people.
Making a keen comparison to developed countries, the minister said they all started their development through agriculture , and that then took them to increasing production and productivity, value addition, and that had now aid them in supporting themselves and also the economies of other developing countries across the world.
He said in doing so, farmers most times need machines to do the job, but in Sierra Leone when one spoke of machines all that runs through the minds of many is tractors, combined harvesters and other heavy machines, and that he added cannot remedy the situation, but with machines such as power tillers the problem would be a thing of the past, as most of the farmers in sierra Leone conducted their activities on five and ten hectares of land.
We have implemented the Financial Service Association he stressed, and adding that as a Minister of the said ministry, he would ensure a huge reduction in the interest rate that is being requested by the local banks from a two digit to one as that would encourage many farmers to embark on making use of the facilities.
Even as farmers would be given the opportunity to take loans from the FSA’s, they must however endeavor to pay and on time, as other farmers would be there waiting to grab the same opportunity. Meanwhile, farmers are still stressing the need for a well certified seeds and also the provision of fertilizers from the ministry.
