By: Saidu Jalloh (Intern)
With the huge chunk of rice imported for all security sectors, the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security together with the Presidential Council for Delivery the Feed Salone Initiative has instructed the Police, Military and Prison Officers that from next year 25% of their rice will be grown by themselves.
This drive is in accordance with president Bio’s food security and sufficiency as his second term priority.
Speaking to journalists at the weekly press conference, the Minister of Agriculture and Food and Security, Dr. Musa Kpaka opined that from 2018 to 2023, the government had spent One Million Three Hundred Thousand [1,300,000] New Leones on purchasing rice for the Military, Police, People in Remand Home, Fire Force and Bordering Home Schools according. He stated that the money is coming directly from the government to buy rice for these institutions.
‘’When I show this data to His Excellency, the president Julius Maada Bio; he said no this has to change. I have met with the procurement officer at the Correctional Service Center and the first paper going to cabinet will be that staring next year 25% of these institution name should start to produce rice themselves,’’ Minister Kpaka explained.
The Minister revealed that he asked the procurement of officers of those institutions the amount bags of rice they buy every month; the Military 9,000 and correctional service center 6,000. The minister said is huge with the availability of 6,000 acres of land; he will persuade the Minister of Finance so that the money used to buy rice for these sectors will be given to them to grow their own food.
Dr. Musa Kpaka also denotes that we all must change our attitude if we want the FEED SALONE initiative to be successful, in explaining this; he said that the president has improved in all corruption indices at institutional level so this also has to happen in individual level.
“If you are given money to do farming, please go and do it. We all must ensure that it happen but if you steal money meant for farming and we find out, you will pay the money or we hand you over to Anti-Corruption to deal with you,” he affirmed.
Dr. Musa Kpaka also expressed that the government is deliberating about the type of crops to target and that Sierra Leone is blessed with ecology that can support plenty crops and live stocks but the crops or food that we know are highly imported such as Rice, Onion, and Poultry [frozen chicken]. He added that in April 2020 t0 2023, Sierra Leone had imported about sixty million frozen chicken [60,000,000] and in the same period thirteen million eggs [13, 000, 000]. He also advised that instead of importing flour we use our cassava to make flour which can meet most of our demand for flour rather to import.
He assured farmers and consumers about the access to market, he said that they have laid a program to make sure that some of those crops have value chain cluster and finding trunk roads that will lead from production sites to the nearest town market to make sure that when farmers produce their product should reach the market easily. He concluded by saying they are going to build stores to sore their product when there is a glut in the market and when rainy season comes, they will be able to sell their market.