MOA SET TO GIVE AGRO MACHINERIES TO FARMERS ON TUESDAY

(Monrovia, Friday, September 3, 2021): – On Tuesday, September 7, the Ministry of Agriculture will donate dozens of newly arrived agro machineries to Liberian farmers who had applied for them and went through the ministry’s two-month thorough vetting processes.

The vetting was done by a committee of five technicians from various departments at the ministry since July after the machineries’ arrivals were completed.

Many applicants were found not to be actual farmers after spot-checks verifications were made on their applications and some falsely claimed farms as theirs and later the actual owners showed up. The field verifications were done by the Ministry’s respective County Agriculture Officers.

The machineries were purchased under the Ministry’s COVID 19 Food Security, Nutrition and Livelihood Plan, which was formulated in April 2020 by Minister Jeanine Cooper immediately after ascending as Minister, as part of her Expanding Cultivation’s vision – drifting from Liberia’s traditional subsistence to modern mechanized farming.

The Plan was immediately endorsed by Liberia’s three multilateral partners – African Development Bank (ADB), International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) and the World Bank – which continue to fund this plan through their respective funded projects executed by the ministry.

The plan is meant to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 on Liberian farmers.

Tuesday’s donation will have machineries covering cassava, rice and vegetable sectors that include processors, destoners, winnowers, dryers, pilers, power tillers, motorized pumps, vegetable crates, hanging scales among others.

Under the doctrine of transparency, names and locations of beneficiaries will be published.

They were purchased by the ministry from a World Bank’s funding accessed within the STAR Project which the ministry executes. In July, the ministry distributed 30 power tillers to farmers in Lofa and Nimba Counties through the Tree Crops Extension Projects (TCEPs)which it implements with funding from the IFAD.

Fifteen were given to each of the two counties as TCEPs’ Financing Agreements passed by the National Legislature restrict interventions to only those two counties.

Prior to the arrivals of these equipment by components in March 2021 and completed in July 2021, Minister Cooper, since her ascendency in February 2020, had been handing over equipment which she met at the ministry and had overstayed with dust along with spider web accumulating on them.

In April 2020, she gave out four power tillers to farmers in Lofa and Nimba Counties which were purchased since 2016.

In November 2020, Minister Cooper, handed over several agro processing equipment – including incubators – to farmers in Central Liberia which were purchased in 2011 and had been in crates and lying at a MOA’s facility in Gbarnga.

Incubators meant to increase eggs hatchery, rice threshers for harvesting, cassava mills to process raw cassava into different products and generators to power some of the machineries were the equipment given out today.

Also in December 2020, Minister Cooper handed over seven feed mills to the Association of Liberian Livestock Farmers to enhance and increase their livestock -poultry and piggery -productions that will reduce the country’s reliance on poultry and pig meat’s imports.

Those feed mills were purchased through a donor-funded project under the MOA in 2015; they had accumulated dust and spider web over the years, but were not given to farmers.

Hammer mills, as they are also called, process, grind corn and other feeds into smaller grains to improve digestibility for livestock. All the handovers were publicly announced.