Farmer |
The Ministry of
Agriculture (MOA) with support and funding from the Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) has engaged several extension workers in a three-day
training at the Central Agricultural Research Institute (CARI) in
Suakoko District, Bong County.
The 24 extension
officers, including six employees from the Liberia Institute for
Geo-Information Services, were trained in the latest data collection
technology. At the end of the training, each participant received a
state of the art mobile phone that they will use for the at their
assigned areas of work.
In an interview
with this newspaper recently, Nasi Broh, National Project Coordinator
for the Rebuilding of Statistics at the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA),
said the participants were selected from Bong, Lofa, Nimba and Bomi
counties.
According to Broh,
they are trained to use the CAPI application the ministry recently
introduced and is installing on the various mobile phones to collect key
information from livestock and crop farmers in the four counties in
relation to production.
He said that Bong,
Nimba and Lofa counties were selected as part of this Agriculture Sample
Pilot Survey from statistics which indicate that they are 'the highest
food producing counties,' while Bomi County was selected as 'the least
food producing county' to test the project.
"The sole objective
of the training was to rebuild the capacity of extension officers,
re-establish the data collection by means of modern technology through
the CAPI, where agriculture extension officers will interview farmers on
the production of livestock and crops for the Agriculture Sample
Survey," Broh said.
According to the
MOA project coordinator, with the introduction of the new technology -
and as part of the pilot phase of the project, the MOA will be able to
establish challenges the farmers are faced with, the level of production
and services provided to individual farmers and farmers' access to
extension officers.
Broh said the 'new
automated collection of agriculture data' introduced for the first time
in the four counties, will help the ministry in setting up an effective
agriculture data management system.
"Since this country
gained independence, we have used the manual collection of paper data,
and we have made no gains in terms of statistics of production. So I
think with this new technology, we will be able to effectively keep data
on our farmers to avoid going to the FAO or WFP for data, which is not
good for us as a country," Broh said.
A representative of
the participants commended the FAO for the support to the MOA to
facilitate such an important training workshop that is expected to help
them keep data collected from the farmers and to set up an effective
agriculture management system in the country.
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