A seven-member Appraisal Mission delegation  from Taipei, Taiwan, comprising specialists in Agricultural policy, engineering , marketing and production, including two Taiwanese International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF)  staff on Thursday left for Taipei, after completing  a week-long fact-finding mission in The Gambia.

Speaking to the Daily Observer yesterday, Dr Patrick Chang Taiwanese Ambassador to The Gambia said the assessment is a very important one which, according to him, was envisaged by the President Yahya Jammeh in his quest for food self-sufficiency by 2015.

According to Dr Patrick Chang, a lot of efforts have to be made to reach this goal as this is the main work of the DOSA, noting that he is pretty sure the SoS and his colleagues are working very hard to achieve the goal.

Dr Chang assured his embassy’s continuous support for the realization of these objectives, noting that the delegation visited Sapu and the area where Taiwanese Technical Mission (TTM) has been planning to cultivate an area close to 1000 hectares of tidal irrigation farm, whose target is to produce about 10,000 metric tons of rice annually.

“We do hope that with the kind of cooperation it can be increased. The delegation also met with officials of DoSA, NARI and Action Aid and others, “he said Dr David SC Lin, a Counselor at the Council of Agriculture Executive Yuan and Leader of the delegation, said during their major findings, they have discovered that rice, which is the staple food in The Gambia has rapidly converted to grain production in the last fifteen years.

According to Dr David, about 81% of the total annual rice consumption in The Gambia is imported.
Dr Lin added that, rice food self-sufficiency rate is less than 20%, which indicates that the country should be able to produce about 133,000 metric tons of paddy rice annually to reach the goal of 100% rice sufficiency in the year 2015.

He added that the country’s present annual production is at 30, 00 metric tons.

Dr Lin added that, although the land policy in The Gambia is quite complicated the implementation of food self-sufficiency programme will not be affected. He then noted that labour shortage is used to be found in the rice production in The Gambia, thus the need for farm machinery.

He added that the main constraints of rice production in the country are the lack of production credits, appropriate seeds and fertilizers and poor transportation infrastructures for farmers to enable them access farms and the inconvenience for marketing their products. 

The Appraisal Mission also highlighted strategies to attain the goal of rice self- sufficiency, which includes the expansion of rice production and the development of new upland and swamp rice area.
In conclusion, Appraisal Mission recommended that the goal of food self-sufficiency by 100% in the year 2015 is indeed feasible as outlined above.