After reading President Jammeh's interview I cannot help but to note a few interesting points.

1. he said:
"If you look at The Gambia's agricultural produce in retrospect, from
independence to '94 and from '94 to now, Gambians would realise a big
difference. We have a higher out put - bumper harvest almost every year. So
really, the food basket will not fall from the sky. What you need is enough
rainfall and fertile soil and every year the Department of State for
Agriculture supplying fertilise, there is enough rain and we have supplied
tractors free of charge to farmers. But the rest is left to the individual
farmer to go back to the land. So we are doing everything possible to make
sure that we are self sufficient. Those who talk about insufficiency in food
supply do no also take certain factors into consideration. If you go to
Lumos, you will see Gambians selling cereals at very low prices to
Senegalese and what normally happens is, the Senegalese or whoever buys
these food stuff keep them until June when the farmers must have sold
everything and are almost hungry, bring back the same food stuff and sell it
to the same farmers at cut throat prices. So if you go around the Lumo, you
see people selling Suno, coos, corn, millet...and some of them tend to
forget that they need the same food stuff for the upkeep of the family. ...
I didn't say they should not sell their supplies but I believe that if we
sell them within the Gambia, there will be nothing like hunger in this
country. Basically, farmers have no excuse to be hungry. But the role of men
in food production is crucial yet women tend to take the lead in subsistence
farming while men, to some extent, concentrate on cash corps -"

I must say the above paragraph demonstrate how complex the situation is back home. First as he noted that despite "enough rainfall, fertilizers, ...free tractors,.. and bumper harvests almost every year" the Gambia could not realise self-sufficiency. Then he blamed the need for "the individual farmer to go back to land", "Gambians selling cereals at low prices to Senegalese or whoever..." and "the men ..concentrating on cash crops". And he concluded that the "farmers have no excuse to be hungry".

First let me say that it is not enough to have higher output after 6 months of hard labor in the farms. What matters is higher value on what is produced. Perhaps President Jammeh and his team should work on how to increase the value of the unit production of an individual farmer intead of blaming them for not procing more. I do not believe that the Gambia has overall experienced any significant decrease in area farmed due to farm abandonment by rural-urban migration since 1990. If that is the case then it should not matter if every farmer is on the land or not. All that matters is the value per unit output. Infact if every eligible farmer were to return to the farm today, not everyone will have a plot to cultivate in the Gambia. In sum there is land shortage the Gambia. Evidence of this can be traced to the increase in land related  conflicts in almost every part of the country. Another point to appreciate is the nature of Gambia's cropping system. Improvement in farming methods (animal traction, tractors? ) meant that you do not need to spend 150 days at the farm. All you need is in most cases 25 to 30 days on your fields. A few days planting, a few days weeding and a few days harvesting. That means that most men can stay in in the bantabas or  Banjul and farm a plot or two in Kiang. Or make a few Dalasis attending to Lumos and other market places. Also when every men engage in dry season gardening across the country where and how would they sell their produce? Already many women gardeners outside the Kombo cannot find market for the little they produce. The irony is that Gambians import onions from Holland while onion from North Bank and CRD gets rotten due to lack of market. That being the case it is sound economics and not laziness for men to find other income generating ventures other than gardening.

Another important point  is that Suno, coos, corn and millet are not traditional women crops cash crops in most parts of the Gambia. Since early 1990s farmers have consistently shifted their focus from growing peanut the traditional cash crops to millet and corn for two reasons. 1) collapse of the groundnut industry and 2) the desire to grow more foods especially with rice production failing in most places due to drought. With the emergence of the Lumos many realized that they could make the extra Dalasi they need selling millet instead of peanuts. I think the President and his team should find  ways to help the farmers increase the value of the millet they sell (thereby they would need to sell less for their cash needs) or find a market for their traditional crop, groundnut.

What he seems to ignore is that the average Gambian or the Gambia for that matter needs money. It makes perfect economic sense for the farmer to sell part of his produce to get some cash to pay for tax, school fees, cloths, rice (when he chose to eat only that) or pay for candles, soap, or transportation to Banjul. It makes even more sense if the the source of that cash is outside the Gambia (Senegal or America) given that the clothes, shoes, candle, soap are all made outside the Gambia! 
The government should instead of disapproving that should negotiate with Senegal and other ECOWAS countries to facilitate Gambian middle traders doing what the Senegalese are doing. That way Gambians will get the added benefits of being both the producer and sellers of their produce. More importantly he should improve millet processing and packaging to increase the value of millet.

2. Then went to say:
"A sense of responsibility is all they need. They should know that as men and
heads of families, they are entirely responsible for the upkeep and
maintenance of the family. So if they grow only cash crops knowing that what
they get may be all spent on food stuff, then they should concentrate on
both food and cash crops because that is what used to obtain in the past.
Look at our Gambian women, they work twelve out of twelve months - that is a
whole year. There is no law that says men cannot do that. You look at school
children, you have about ninety eight per cent of them having their school
fees paid by their mothers, they are clothed by their mothers. In most
cases, in some homes, it is the mother that has to toil to bring something
to the table. What are we husbands doing? Who is giving the women the
incentive? The Social Development Fund is there and other funds but who
access these funds to utilise them? They are women, so the only incentive is
a sense of responsibility to know that it is my responsibility as the father
or husband of the compound to provide both-cash and food crops to make sure
that the burden of producing food crops does not lie squarely on women."

Finally, I believe that the above is a serious understatement on the role of men in Gambian society. I do not believe there is data to remotely suggest that "You look at school children, you have about ninety eight per cent of them having their school fees paid by their mothers, they are clothed by their mothers. In most cases, in some homes, it is the mother that has to toil to bring something to the table. " 

While I do not dispute the fact that most of our rural women are seriouly over-worked I do not think that the solution is for men to over-work themselves. The solution is to improve traditional women jobs to give them the extra free time men now enjoy. Given that Gambia is still a labor divided society, the government should focus on developing centralized or decentralized millet processing plants. It is not enough to put up a grinding machine in a village. We need centers where people can take their bags of millet and processed it into coos coos (Footo or Chere), flour, grit or anyother easy to prepare food. That would not only reduce time spent on food processing (woman's job) but make millet effectively compete rice as staple food. The government should encourage research into food processing, preserving and preserving methods. 

 If one can walk into an African foodstore in the Bronx, New York City to buy Chere, Mono(Rue), Char Kri and other millet-based foods, I see no reason why we cannot do it in Banjul. If all one needs to do to have a Chere dinner is to add boiling water to a pre-processed, packaged Chere, I bet broken rice from Thailand or Pakistan will be soon forgotten.


Malanding  Jaiteh

<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>

To view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]

<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>