Smallholder farmers in The Gambia have produced 660 metric tonnes of rice and 95 tonnes of beans for the homegrown school feeding project of the World Food Programme (WFP).

Development Diaries gathered that WFP paid 30 million dalasis to the smallholder farmers.

‘This rice was produced locally in The Gambia and will be used for school feeding programme, a total amount of some USD400,000 or 30 million Gambian dalasis went directly to Gambian smallholder farmers’, the WFP Country Director in The Gambia, Yasuhiro Tsumura, said.

The International Trade Administration (ITA) has described agriculture as the most important sector in the country’s economy.

As for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), over 60 percent of Gambians depend on farming and agriculture for their livelihood.

However, recent agriculture output levels only meet 50 percent of the country’s food needs with crop yields generally low due to weak food production systems, successive drought and flood-depleted soils and climate change.

Data from the WFP shows that poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition have worsened in the last ten years, with 10.3 percent of children suffering from acute malnutrition and 48 percent of the population in poverty.

A local WFP staff, Elizabeth Sowe, said she was happy the WFP homegrown school feeding programme was having multiple impact.

‘As a WFP staff and a Gambian I am happy that our local farmers are being supported and our school going children as well. We change and save lives’, Sowe said in a tweet.

An estimated 360,000 children receive a meal at school from the WFP school feeding programmes in over 500 schools in the country.

Photo source: Yasuhiro Tsumura