FSRP Drives Transition from Smallholder to Large-Scale Commercial Farming through Mechanized Private Sector Partnerships and Community-Led Cluster Approach

Over 70% of the farming population in Sierra Leone are in rural areas, mainly engaged in rain-fed subsistence farming with less than 1 hectare of land holdings. Given this scale of farming, there has been little or no surplus to support the staple food consumption needs of the country, making Sierra Leone a net importer of food. The problem of low productivity as an outcome of poor-quality inputs and climate variability has been a major determinant, further shrinking farming outputs. Consequently, this has rendered the socioeconomics of Sierra Leone's rural farmers deplorable, making them vulnerable in the face of food security shocks and threats.

Despite the huge investments made by the government in the past decades to ameliorate the agriculture production ecosystem problems, the efforts have not come to bear on improvement in the sector. Notably, the misalignment of intervention pathways with the country’s food system priorities and ineffective implementation approaches have been major drawbacks. Understanding this nexus of problems in the country’s farming situation, the Food System Resilience Program (FSRP-SL), a World Bank funded program implemented by the Government of Sierra Leone, introduced an innovative approach that shifts the focus of smallholder farmers towards commercialization in their farming efforts by triggering strategic partnership with private sector players to provide mechanization service including ploughing, harrowing, seed harrowing, and harvesting of vast lowland ecologies and distributing improved rice seeds, fertilizer, and other agro-chemicals in fourteen agricultural districts across Sierra Leone. This effort led to rice cultivation for over 16,500 hectares of lowland in 2024.

The thrust of this approach was the institution of the Community-Led Clustered Farming Model that promotes sustainable agriculture practices and encourages farmers from various nearby communities to consolidate their efforts for large-scale farming, making technology transfer more efficient and productive, and fostering community cohesion and effective resource utilization. With these investments, major transformations have been evident, as testified by the project’s beneficiaries.

Mohamed Sankoh, a 30-year-old farmer from Tonkolili, shared his experience: "I never believed I could achieve such output from my farming — 30 bags of cleaned 50kg bag of husk rice in my household after farming for 10 years. When FSRP interfaced with the community including my household, they encouraged us to join the nearby community with a bigger farmland and farm of 500Ha. They told us that machines would prepare our land for free, and provide seeds, fertilizer, and herbicides. At first, I was hesitant to leave my small plot and move to a different site, but I later realized that the program came to empower us to produce more rice for our families, which is 10 times more than what we were cultivating individually."

In fact, FSRP not only provided input, and mechanization support to these farmers but also supported knowledge transformation for adaptive responses to climate change effects through extension visits to provide advisory and disseminate early warning messages, central to its Integrated Landscape Management effort. This effort manifested its relevance in the widespread flooding that affected major farmlands across the country in the 2024 farming season, showing an average of only about 15% loss from the farms. As quoted by one of the farmers supported in the Port Loko district, this effort has been very impactful in addressing crop failure problems for farmers.

Isatu Sesay-Taklaneh, a farmer in Magbota, Port Loko district, explained: "Major flooding occurs here every five years. Similar flooding occurred this year and affected rice farms around including mine. However, before this time our capacity to respond to this problem was low. When FSRP began supporting us, we requested early provision of seeds and fertilizers so the rice could be established before any flooding. The program responded promptly, providing mechanization services, seeds, fertilizers, and extension support, including early warning messages. However, labour shortages delayed seed broadcasting in some parts of the field, which suffered more from the flooding."