Liberia Must Grow Beyond One Crop

Liberian market women still travel to neighboring countries to buy tomatoes, eggplants and other produce to sell at home. They go because their customers need these foods and they cannot always find enough from Liberian farms at a price they can afford. When local supplies run short, imports rise and prices can climb.

This should be on our minds when we hear cassava called the "new white gold." Cassava has great promise. It feeds families, and farmers can earn money from both the roots and the stems used for planting. With the right equipment and buyers, it can also support businesses that make and sell food products.

We should help those businesses grow. But we should remember what happened with rubber.

For many years, Liberia depended heavily on natural rubber to earn money from farming. Rubber brought in revenue and provided jobs. But people cannot eat rubber. When the crop was doing well, we could have used more of its earnings to grow the food Liberians eat and to build other farm businesses. We did not do enough of that. Today, rubber farmers are struggling, while we still rely on other countries for many foods sold in our markets.

Let us not place the same hopes on cassava alone. A strong farming economy needs many crops. Rice, cassava, beans, soybean, vegetables and fruits can help feed our people. Coffee, cocoa, oil palm and other crops can bring income to farmers and businesses. When one crop earns less, others can help families keep going.

Farmers can sometimes grow more than one crop on the same land. For example, food crops can be planted between rows of young rubber trees while farmers wait for the trees to produce latex. Suitable beans and other legumes can give families food and, when grown properly, infuse nourishment for the soil. This way, the farmer gains something now while caring for a crop that will earn money later.

Our market women show us where to begin. Liberia already has farmers who grow tomatoes, eggplants and other vegetables. How can we help them supply markets more often and at prices traders can pay? They need good seeds, water to grow crops during the dry season, and roads that allow them to bring fresh produce to town before it spoils. We should ask market women what they buy abroad, when local supplies run out and what would make them buy more from Liberian farmers.

Growing more is only part of the job. Farmers also need people ready to buy what they grow. Rice needs milling. Coffee needs careful handling and buyers who will pay for good quality. Cassava needs processors who can buy enough roots to keep their businesses running. A farmer should not be encouraged to produce a bigger harvest only to find there is no market for it.

There are jobs here beyond planting and harvesting. People can produce seeds, repair farm machines, drive produce to market, process food and package it for sale. Liberia needs to help its people learn these skills. That way, more of the money earned from our crops stays with Liberian families.

The Seeds4Liberia project is working with several crops, including cassava, rice, soybean and coffee. That is a welcome start. What matters now is whether farmers and businesses can keep producing and selling after the project ends.

There is reason to act now. Trouble at sea can make shipping, fuel and farm supplies more expensive. Liberia is right to work with India and other countries to make shipping safer. But agreements made abroad may take time to ease the cost of living at home.

What will the cows eat while we wait for the grass to grow? We must keep working for safer shipping, but we must also grow more food here and help it reach our markets. We cannot leave families waiting for one crop or one international effort to solve every problem.

Cassava deserves our support. So do the tomatoes and eggplants our traders cross borders to buy, and the many other crops Liberians can grow. Rubber taught us the danger of depending too heavily on one crop. This time, let us spread our hopes, our investments and our work across many.

Read the original article on Liberian Observer.