Liberia's food insecurity

It's October and as usual in
Liberia, the rains would not stop;
soaking the grounds and
preventing hustlers from doing
their normal routine. This is even
worst for poor farmers who
heavily rely on traditional
subsistent lowland farming. By
now, farmers continue to harvest
what they have labored for
months, though it is evident that
what they are harvesting can
barely feed them for more than
two months.
In Johnsonville, rural
Montserrado County, Mr.
Augustin Tamba leads a family of
27 children on the county's
biggest lowland farm. From 1982
to present, this family continues
to uphold this farm with varieties
of produce that are yet to make
their way to the market due
mostly to insufficiency or lack of
access to the market.
From Bong County in central
Liberia to Nimba and Lofa
counties in the North and North-
western parts respectively,
stories shared by farmers remain
the same. Their farms cannot
produce enough to cater to more
than ten families for two months,
not even their own family.
A retired banker, Tamba has lived
the rest of his life farming
different kinds of agricultural
produce; ranging from
vegetables to palm fruits. In
recent years, leading a family of
27 children, Tamba's main focus
has become rice, Liberia's staple
food.
From the last farming season,
Tamba harvested only a little over
two tons of seed rice, which
hardly sustained his family for a
month; though he and his family
labored several months. Deciding
whether to eat the already small
harvest or selling it to solve
financial problem is like being
caught between the two edges
of the scissors.
Even if the harvests were more,
farmers in Liberia, Augustine no
exception, lack the knowledge of
proper processing and storage;
thereby causing more
postharvest loses. This elaborates
some reasons why food security
remains a challenge in Liberia.
However, solving this single
problem tends to accommodate
several proposals, including
appropriate investment in the
country's agriculture sector; the
primary theme of this special
reportage done for The African
Story Challenge (TASC), a
continental journalism
competition by the African Media
Initiative (AMI) - based in Nairobi,
Kenya.