Project Detail

An Innovative Organic farming for sustainable production, packaging and marketing of improved cassava products to promote food sufficiency and climate resilience

The project titled "An Innovative Organic farming for sustainable production, packaging and marketing of improved cassava products to promote food sufficiency and climate resilience" is located in Laheun Kovoma, in Njaluahun Chiefdom in Kailahun District. This project shall support the efforts to increase the income of small and medium farmers engaged in cassava cultivation but has little access to valuate addition and therefore loss a huge chunk of the finance to petty traders who often buy their products at farm gate price. The project shall illustrate through demonstration plots using agronomic best practices to provide first hand skills to 150 selected farmers. Improve cassava six-month variety have already been imported from Indonesia and has been tried and tested. The farmers shall learn hands-on by actively participating in the cultivation of cassava on demonstration plots and the skills shall be progressively escalated amongst other farmers within twelve months. The improved cassava harvest shall immediately contribute to increase in household income but more importantly, the value addition to the cassava tubers shall constitute wealth creation for farmers. In realizing this objective, this project shall establish one value addition/processing facilities in Lalehun Kovoma. The facility shall immediately provide jobs to 40 people among whom 30 people shall become traders responsible to purchase cassava tubers from farmers in the surrounding villages, 5 people shall be trained in operation and maintenance of processing machine and packaging of High Quality Flour (HQF) and an additional 5 people shall be employed in products marketing to provincial markets in Kenema, Bo and Freetown. The project shall promote improved economic, nutritional, environmental and agricultural practices. The project addresses land degradation by converting 50 acres of barren land under productive land use management non production. The proposed sustainable organic agriculture solves the widespread land hunger build-up and the deplorable status of household income of 150 rural farmers.
The overall project goal is to improve the livelihood of 150 rural farmers through a pilot cassava production and processing facility that contribute to improved food sufficiency and household income and build farmers? adaptive capacity on climate resilient agriculture.

The project has the following specific objectives:
1. To promote value addition to cassava roots that improves the food security and income earning for 150 farmers including 80 females and 70 males.
2. To promote land use planning and management addressing 50 acres of degraded land through sustainable climate resilient agricultural practices to improve cassava yield per year.
3. Install one village-level cassava processing facility for value addition to produce High-Quality Cassava Flour (HQCF) and other cassava products for marketing.
4. Promote Knowledge transfer to 40 youths through hands-on training on demonstration plots and create jobs along cassava value chain including the marketing, purchase and distribution of products that employs rural women hawkers and traders.
5. Promote awareness and capacity building for 150 rural farmers on climate change and coping strategies.

Project Snapshot

Grantee:

Movement for Community Advancement

Country:

Sierra Leone

Area Of Work:

Climate Change Mitigation
Land Degradation

Operational Phase:

OP6 - Y5 (Jul 19-Jun 20)

Grant Amount:

US$ 25,000.00

Co-Financing Cash:

US$ 10,000.00

Co-Financing in-Kind:

US$ 35,000.00

Project Number:

SLE/SGP/OP6/Y5/CORE/YCC/03/12/2019/67

Start Date:

12/2019

End Date:

11/2020

Status:

Satisfactorily Completed

Project Characteristics and Results

Promoting Public Awareness of Global Environment

In regards to communicating the results of the project, success stories and lessons learnt will be made available to other organizations implementing similar projects and this information will also be published on the GEF webiste. Moreover, success stories will be published in the national local newspaper and also brochures, which will be distributed across the country. Documentaries will also be created to establish benchmarks and share best practices

Notable Community Participation

The Project Management Unit (PMU) carried out a baseline assessment where the different categories of the population participated. The PMU will maintain very close contact with the rural end-users in the Lalehun Kovoma community. The Project Manager and programme colleagues will organise regular meetings and workshop with community stakeholders and end-users to secure their concurrence and support to every activities proposed in the project cycle for implementation and to explain to them the benefits that they would derive from such activities. In addition, a project management board will be formed to oversee the project implementation. Community members will be encouraged to invest into agriculture in order to benefit both from components of the project (irrigation and electrification).

Policy Impact

The marketing system for most traditional crops and their products is characterized by fluctuations in supply and unregulated pricing. The law of supply and demand determines product prices. This project intends to carry out quarterly market surveys to determine the supply of cassava products and help the government with up-to-date information on product for best pricing policy formulation.

Emphasis on Sustainable Livelihoods

The men shall be hired and paid man-day for all farm brushing, clearing, planting and processing while the 80 women among the 150 beneficiaries shall mechanically weed with hoes or adapted cutlasses as and when necessary and shall also be paid man-day for labour. The cash directly improve their household income.

Gender Focus

The project aims at empowering women, and in particular women from socially and economically disadvantaged groups in Lalehun Kovoma farming community. Every effort will be made to ensure the concerns of women and other vulnerable groups in the community are fully looked into at every stage of the project cycle and as end-users of the cassava project. In Lalehun community women, who are likely to be the prime beneficiaries of the increased production brought by PVDI-SSI installations, currently do most market gardening

Capacity - Building Component

The project has core staff with the requisite experience and qualification to implement the project.

Significant Participation of Indigenous Peoples

The project team shall involve the community people in the evaluation of the farm processes, value addition processes and marketing dynamics and review any gaps for better services and income for farmers. All of these evaluation shall be done in the local language for their active participation and understanding of the processes.

Inovative Financial Mechanisms

The team leader and monitoring and evaluation officers will try and harvest knowledge and information generated from project activities and ensure are well documented in the form of reports, project briefs, project archive, etc. that would inform better and strategic decisions making. All staff and project board members will be encouraged to allocate some of their time to contribute to knowledge management activities including organizing regular community meetings to provide updates on progress. A project file will be established in order to document good practices, which can be adopted by other communities within the chiefdom, district and at national level at large.

+ View more

Indicators

Biophysical

Number of innovations or new technologies developed / applied 50

Empowerment

Number of CBOs / NGOs participated / involved in SGP project 5

Biophysical

Hectares of degraded land rest 50

Livehood

Total monetary value (US dollars) of ecosystem goods sustainably produced and providing benefit to project participants and/or community as a whole (in the biodiversity, international waters, and land degradation focal areas as appropriate) 500

Back to search results

Countries

Regions

Project Snapshot

SGP Country office contact

Address