May 24, 2021
By Mohamed M. Sesay
Just after he was consensually approved by the Fourth Session of the Fifth Parliament of the Second Republic of Sierra Leone as the Country’s substantive Minister of Agriculture Forestry and Food Security, Abu Bakarr Karim has assured the nation that his Ministry will be providing machineries, fertilizers and seeds to farmers in order to boost food sufficiency and mitigate the dependency syndrome of food importation.
Talking to the press just after the his approval, Minister Abu Bakarr Karim disclosed that his appointment as the substantive Minister for the Agriculture Ministry did not come as a surprise to him because he said he has done excellently well at the ministry and that is the more reason why the president saw the need to appoint him as the Minister for Agriculture.
He added that his goal now at the ministry is to improve on rice production and that the only way to achieve such is to look at new means of robustly reinventing into the agriculture sector. He acknowledged that in the past, people have been depending on subsistence farming which had had little impact on the promotion of food sufficiency in the country.
Therefore going forward, Abu Bakarr Karim reassured the his Ministry will now be focusing more on mechanize farming by putting more machines in to farming activities so that people can be able to cultivate more harvest. He furthered that, in order to achieve the aspect of mechanize farming should not just be limited to the preparation of the lands, but also taking into consideration of the right type of seeds, the right type of inputs, and the right type of fertilizers coupled with some form of innovation in the agricultural sector.
He continued that the importance of the fertilizers are to ensure the country has the desire yield. He further lamented that order to achieve the desired agricultural yield, he said government has put together machines of which every district will have a machine so that it will also give the opportunity to every district to put their lands under cultivation that will boost food sufficiency and food security.
He stressed that with the new method and manner in which he has been running the ministry, the country now have seeds companies who are mainly focused on seeds production. He reminded that for one to have seeds to plant, one also has to plant the seeds as well and produce it which will take the same time as the time of cultivation. He recalled that at the height of covid-19, he made sure that he provided seeds for all the areas government supported considering it as a very tough move because government had to order for those seeds abroad. He therefore reaffirmed that this time around through the intervention of the President, a Vietnam Team that is currently in the country is helping the government with seeds has so far helped the government with eighteen variety of seeds.
“I am asking Sierra Leoneans to be focused, patient and take the responsibility of engaging into agricultural activity so that the government vision of ensuring food sufficiency will be actualized. I am craving on the indulgence of all Sierra Leoneans to invest in agriculture as the President himself is the master farmer including other political heads. If we all engage into active farming that will help greatly in producing our own foods and stop depending on the importation of foreign foods. We are working towards food sufficiency and the president is very keen as part of his Human Capital Development Agenda of which agriculture is very critical”, he concluded.