SIERRA LEONE maq 4ª.indd - agrilife - Europa

the Northern region, this labour shortage means
that farmers are unable to harvest the entirety of
their crop, and are obliged to leave part of their
crop in the fields. 25
As Unruh and Turray (2006) highlight the
post-war reduction in labour availability has
not been replaced by mechanised farming thus
leading to the cultivation of even smaller plots
and the associated problems in food production
as surplus is not enough to feed the now larger
(post war) urban population. Such post-war
situation has led to significant changes in
rural social relations, for now it is more widely
recognised the strategic value of labour for timely
agricultural practices and food security issues.
The impacts of such changes are that agricultural
labour is now much more costly, and much less
likely to operate within any obligatory framework,
and that traditional forms of “forced” labour
have been replaced by a process of negotiation
to engage labour. This approach is supported
by the government. This new context has also
provided the opportunity for marginalised groups
(particularly within landowning families) to
exercise rights regarding land that might not have
occurred otherwise, such as land access for youth
and women’s groups.
3.3.3 Household and Division of Labour
An average household is composed of 6.5
persons (NRDS, 2009). The household head is
generally male. A woman can be head only in
the absence of a male in the household. Although
both men and women have important roles
in the agriculture sector, there is considerable
gender differentiation in the tasks undertaken.
Men clear land and plough, women weed and
both harvest. This means that men’s input is more
intensive at given times, often when there are
likely to be labour bottlenecks, and women’s is
more spread out throughout the growing season,
25 Field observation during validation by the project team
(Alpha Lakoh, Baudouin Michel, Gisèle Hites, Sergio
Gomez y Paloma and Frank Sammeth, December 2009).
though crucial for realising good yields. During
and after the war, more women have had to take
on the primary responsibility for food production,
because men had been killed, disabled or had
not returned to their home villages. According to
Sesay (2008) women produce 60% of food crops
and handle processing and storage. Traditionally
women also grow vegetables and groundnuts
in home gardens, and undertake the marketing
of these crops. A baseline study, undertaken by
CARE in Fakunya, Kamajei and Gbonkolenken
chiefdoms in the Moyamba and Tonkolili districts
respectively, indicated that 82% of marketing
societies, related to garden productions, are for
women producers (Sesay et al., 2004).
3.3.4 Production at the Farm Household Level
Sierra Leonean farming is generally
characterised by low input / low output
production (NSADP, 2009). Most farm operations
are carried out using hand tools such as hoes and
cutlasses. Farm (hired) labour can be expensive
(and particularly acute are the labour shortages
for cash crops): the daily salary for a male worker
may reach up to 7000 SLL (field observation by
project team). Thus households depend largely
on family labour. Concerning the machinery
which was used in rural areas to process palm
oil, can mangos and process other cash crops it
was destroyed or removed during the war and
has yet to be replaced. Access to tractors is also
highly limited. (Unruh and Turray, 2006)
As mentioned previously, mixed cropping (or
intercropping) is a widespread production process
under the shifting cultivation system. It is extensively
used (particularly for farmers in the uplands) for a
number of reasons which include: lighter labour
input requirements and more balanced gender/
age division of responsibilities, risk minimisation,
improved pest and disease management and
availability of food over a longer period of time.
Risk minimisation is given priority over other targets
(including return/income maximisation) which
characterize the majority of African smallholder
farming systems. (NSADP, 2009)
Rural poverty reduction and food security: The case of smallholders in Sierra Leone
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