SIERRA LEONE maq 4ª.indd - agrilife - Europa

Figure 80. Labour productivity per working unit for Upland rice in the Northern and Eastern regions
working unit in both regions. Distance between
farm households may be attributed to differences
in labour use or effort, interaction with other
inputs (i.e. tools, fertilizers) and the adequate use
of such additional inputs. However, since within
each region different constraints may arise, it is
best to compare farms producing upland rice
at district level. Accordingly, the regional level
comparison shows (Figure 80) that farms in the
Eastern region perform slightly better in terms of
labour productivity per working unit in the case
of upland rice production (productivity at district
level is illustrated in Appendix IV).
From a general perspective, it can be seen
that the most productive farms produce around
10 bushels/acre with one working unit cultivating
up to 6 acres; after that the productivity per
additional acre is diminishing considerably.
This means that labour productivity can reach
60 bushels/year per working unit, which is
equivalent to 1500kg of rice (at least 3 acres/
person (30 bushels/year) would be needed under
the current technology to fulfil the basic dietary
requirement – based on rice only). 45 However,
45 The minimum yearly caloric requirement of rice
equivalent is 760kg rice per year or 985 kcal/year based
on the minimum daily caloric requirement of 2700
calories; 1 kg rice = 1300 calories (PRSP, 2005)). At this
level of output per working unit it is sufficient to cover the
basic caloric needs; however only very few farms reach
this degree of efficiency in their combination of labour
and land use
most of the farms are less productive and dispose
on average of 1-2 acres per household member,
which means they would need to use their
land more efficiently to rich higher yields, or
sell their crop and buy more nutritious food or
need to have to find other sources of income to
survive. Currently on average around one acre/
person is available, except Kono and Kenema
with more than 2 acres (Figure 30), which implies
that production technology requires substantial
increase in improvement so that yields are
increase sufficiently to sustain the present
household population.
In the case of IVS rice, 50 bushels/year per
person may be obtained with a working unit
cultivating up to 3 acres per year (Figure 81). This
translates into approximately 15 bushels per acre,
which is 1.5 times higher than the production of
upland rice. However, most of the farms here also
fall below the observed best practice of some
smallholders in the sample. In fact, the average is
closer to 10 bushels/acre per year.
The Figure 82 on Boli rice production (which
tales place only in the Bombali district located in
the Northern region) shows increasing productivity
of up to 5 acre per person and 10 bushels per
acre, which leads to 50 bushels per person a
year. However in some cases 60-70 bushels can
be reached by one working unit. This shows
that in Bombali district higher productivity can
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