By Mustapha Jallow
On Thursday, farmers across the regions expressed their joyfulness and satisfaction over the year’s season harvest but quickly cried out about the lower pricing of their groundnuts and asked the state to come up with a better price.
The farmers made these expressions during the annual groundnut stakeholders meeting held in Jenoi in the Lower River Region (LRR) to create a platform for the farmers and other groundnut value chain actors to discuss and give recommendations for the groundnut trade season.
In LRR, some farmers were smiling and happy about how their nuts looked healthy and attractive. At the same time, others attribute the quality to the timely fertilizers and expressed delight over the excellent yield of this season. “I’m happy for this season. My groundnuts look attractive and healthy,” Abdou Njie, a local farmer in LRR.
Another farmer said his nuts would be heavy this time, stating they {look beautiful, healthy, and complete on the cover. “We feel happy and valued whenever we {farmers} sell more groundnuts to the government,” he tells the officials. Meanwhile, all the farmers still talked about the price; adding a ton of groundnut should stay above forty thousand dalasi.
John Mendy, the regional agricultural director at URR, said the assessment of this year’s farming season looks satisfactory regarding the performance in the region. He then advised them (farmers) to select the best nuts and store them for the coming season. He said the intervention of various projects supplied farmers with seeds, and among these projects, abundant fertilizer was made available to the doorstep of farmers at an affordable price of D1150 per bag compared to last year with D2500 per bag.
Alagie Ceesay, a member of the Gambia Farmers Association, said this year’s farming season is production, especially the groundnut. He said the government should make groundnut kilo D55, and he urged all farmers to sell their groundnut to GGC because the price of fertilizers had been reduced from D2500 last year to D1000 this year. Ceesay expressed that the government has contributed to the success of this year’s farming seasons, and he called on groundnut farmers to sell their groundnut to the government.
