"We see there is a need for food. Especially for women. We have to help them," says Doh. "Some of them are trying to find a place to help themselves. Their husbands are gone, either died in the war or gone, and their children are left unattended. The women have a lot of troubles."
Originally from Zwedru, Doh spent her career working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Monrovia during the decades-long civil war that devastated the country. "I came back briefly in 2003 just to see - I saw a lot of empty land and empty houses," she says sadly...For ordinary subsistence farmers, the annual cycle of harvest and hunger threatens to continue, committing them to a lifetime of relentless labour to satisfy their basic needs.
By Rebecca Murray
ZWEDRU, Liberia, May 15 (IPS) - Three brightly-clothed women walk slowly around the fallen, charred trees strewn haphazardly across the blackened clearing, each carrying snail shells filled with indigenous rice seed to bury in the rich soil.
The women belong to a local cooperative, Women and Children Development Secretariat (WOCDES), and wake early for the 5-km hike down the dirt road to their farm near Zwedru, Grand Gedeh County, in Liberia's vast forest region on the Ivorian border.
Their day is spent in hard manual labour, hunched over and digging at the soil with small spades. Between them they plant three hectares of seed under a blazing tropical sun, stopping only for a staple meal of rice and cassava leaf.
Jeanet Gay is one of the farmers. A 35-year-old mother, she fled the civil war's fighting to Monrovia, the Liberian capital, only for her husband to be murdered by militiamen on the city's main bridge. Her mother, father and nieces were all killed at home. Neither of her work companions have husbands to support them and their children.
The women's 'upland' rice crop will take up to six months to grow and harvest, and as much as 40 percent of the crop may be lost to birds, groundhogs and other vermin. Meanwhile, the farm's 'lowland' or swamp area, which is naturally irrigated, is reserved for introducing one hectare of rice breeder seed called Nerica.
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Liberia's two commercial rice ventures, including a Libyan-backed 30 million dollars, 17,000-hectare rice farm in fertile Lofa County, are well-suited for the Nerica brand, with financial means to replenish the seed every two harvests, efficient machinery, fertilisers, and irrigation and transportation systems.
Thirty kg of Nerica breeder seeds were recently donated to WOCDES by the local branch of the international development charity, German Agro Action, and will be planted within two weeks.
Nerica is promoted as an antidote to the West African country's painful 'hunger gap', which runs through the rainy season from April to July. This is when the 75 percent of Liberia's rural population who live by subsistence farming begin to exhaust their food stores before the new crop is ready for harvest.
"This is a dream for me," says WOCDES founder, Betty Doh, about the organisation's activities on her family's 275-hectare plot of land. Although Liberian law bans women from inheriting land, Doh's brothers, who received the property when their father died, encouraged her farming initiative wholeheartedly.
"We see there is a need for food. Especially for women. We have to help them," says Doh. "Some of them are trying to find a place to help themselves. Their husbands are gone, either died in the war or gone, and their children are left unattended. The women have a lot of troubles."
Originally from Zwedru, Doh spent her career working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Monrovia during the decades-long civil war that devastated the country. "I came back briefly in 2003 just to see - I saw a lot of empty land and empty houses," she says sadly.
For Liberia's subsistence farmers like Jeanet Gay, however, the Nerica may not offer such a ready solution to their annual hunger gap - indeed it may ultimately threaten their livelihoods.
"To achieve good results, farmers must have easy access to fertilisers, pesticides and extension services, which the vast majority of them simply do not have," says GRAIN. "Perhaps the most serious concern with Nerica is that it is being promoted within a larger drive to expand agribusiness in Africa, which threatens to wipe out the real basis for African food sovereignty - Africa's small farmers and their local seed systems."
In Grand Gedeh County, Betty Doh's WOCDES, the South Eastern Women's Development Association (SEWODA) and the Grand Gedeh Rural Women's project are a few of the farming collaboratives initiated by women hoping to transform from subsistence farming, and into small profitable agricultural businesses.
But they have a long way to go. In an impoverished nation where unemployment hovers around an estimated 85 percent, all are looking for funds. Doh financed the farm's upland seed purchase herself, but lacks the machines, fertilisers and effective pest deterrence to farm her rice crop efficiently. She is unsure where she will get another batch of Nerica grain for the low lands, when what was given to her runs out.
For ordinary subsistence farmers, the annual cycle of harvest and hunger threatens to continue, committing them to a lifetime of relentless labour to satisfy their basic needs.
"When I got back, I cried every day for some time, because I saw Zwedru destroyed, and it was empty for me," remembers Jeanet Gay. "My husband, mother, father, and brothers all lost. But I adjusted after some time, and haven't left since."
"I want to make some money, and take care of my children. After this work I just try to forget and go to bed and feel fine the next day." (END/2009)
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