By Ya Mama Wadda

The president of the republic of the Gambia HE Adama Barrow while delivering  his  State Of The Nation Address at the National Assembly outline signicant improvement on Agriculture from the year  2021- 2022.

 

1. The Agriculture sector is strongly committed to strengthening it’s policy environment and programme implementation efforts. In this respect , emerging challenges will be persistently addressd through new policies and initiatives.

 

2. To provide examples of such undertakings, national fertilizer policy has been formulated and validated, and the development of strategic plan is at an advanced stage. This policy seeks to enchance fertilizer access and targets subsidy beneficiaries for greater production.

 

3. In pursuit of commercial farming, the sector will promote mechanised land preparation to supplying labour – saving machine. Since harvesting is among the least machanised production activities of the target commodity value-chain crops, investments will increase to machanise the harvesting of cereals and stimulate increased manchanical threshing.

 

4. My administration is also enchaning the capacity of breeders and introducing Gambian farmers to fortified short-term, and high-yielding varieties that are resistant to the adverse effects of climate change.

 

5. Using PPP models , we will foster the establishment of processing companies to establish processing and production systems. Hopefully, these interventions will generate employment and market value promotion.

 

6. There will be an incentive -Based  Risk Sharing System for Agriculture Lending. The Ministry of Agriculture has initiated The Gambia Incentive-Risk Sharing and Agricultural Lending facility project (GAMIRSAL) to improve access to finance by de-risking lending to the Agriculture sector. The project will collaborate with financial institutions to avail farmers and value chain actors of the neede finance for a transformed food system.

 

7. The Lending project and inclusion stretegy will contribute to removing access barriers to credit for actors along the agriculture value chains, and beneficiaries would access credit through a risk-sharing mechanism.

Photo credit to Saul Touray