Liberia’s Rice Revolution: Experts Say A Proven Model Offers Hope to Break Dependence on Imports and Reduce Hunger

A field of rice grows as part of the Rice Intensification program. Photo credit: CHAP Facebook page

Summary

• As the Boakai administration drives a major push to lift rice production and reduce vulnerability to price hikes, experts say a new rice growing system could sharply boost yields, cut import dependence and offer a path toward food security.
• A Nigerian success story is shaping Liberia’s approach, with specialists pointing to mechanization, seed systems and policy support as a simple, low-cost model for transforming rice production and doubling yields.
• Challenges remain over investment and political will, but farmers and experts say early gains show Liberia could turn scattered progress into a national rice revolution.

Liberia is slowly adopting what experts say is a proven rice farming method that could help the country grow more food and reduce its dependence on imports. The program known as “System of Rice Intensification” has been used successfully in other countries to increase rice yields. Now a coalition of farmers, policymakers, and international partners plans to scale it up here.

For decades, Liberia has grown rice the same way with low yields, high labor, and heavy reliance on imports to fill the gap. But farmers using the program say they are already seeing better results.

“Before, farmers were getting one to two tons per hectare. Now, with this system, they can produce up to five, even seven,” said Robert Bimba, executive director of the Community of Hope Agriculture Project, a Liberian group promoting sustainable farming and self-reliance through local rice production. “That shows the country has a real path to reduce rice imports.”

Liberia has struggled with food insecurity for decades. The latest Global Hunger Index found Liberia ranked 112 out of 123 countries. It is one of 10 countries in the “serious” category that have not moved in a decade. The Index found one in every three Liberians is undernourished. One in every four children under five is stunted.

Rice is at the center of that challenge. Liberians depend heavily on rice. According to the World Bank – 50 percent of the calories consumed by the average Liberian adult come from rice. Liberia produces roughly one-third of the rice it consumes. The other two-thirds arrives by ship, mostly from India, at a cost shaped by global commodity prices, shipping rates, and the foreign currency exchange market. Global trade shocks can drive prices up and hit Liberians hard.

“Every time you eat imported rice, you are importing poverty, and you are exporting your wealth,” said Bimba who is widely regarded as the pioneer of System of Rice Intensification in Liberia.Experts say that the System of Rice Intensification is already delivering sharply higher yields in Liberia’s fields and has been proven at scale in places like northern Nigeria. They say the question is no longer whether Liberia can grow more rice. It is whether the country can mobilize the political will, investment, and coordination to turn scattered success into a national transformation.

 How System of Rice Intensification Works

The System of Rice Intensification is a set of simple farming methods—planting young seedlings, spacing them well, using less water, and keeping the soil healthy. Together, these steps help rice plants grow stronger roots and produce more grain.

Abdulrahman Danbaba, a lead agronomist with SRI 2030, an Oxford-based global initiative aiming to scale the climate-smart System of Rice Intensification to 50 million hectares by 2030, says the results are clear.

“SRI helps farmers grow more rice in a sustainable way,” Danbaba said. “From our experience, it can increase yields by 50 to 100 percent.”

In April at the in-country launch of the Global Hunger Index in Monrovia, Umar Namadi, the governor of Jigawa State in Nigeria, where the technology helped lift rice yields from a national embarrassment to a continental benchmark, was present to share a blueprint.

He said some yields jumped from about 2.5 tons per hectare to as high as nine tons. On average, farmers produced four to five tons—about double what they were getting before.

Liberia can do what Jigawa did he told the gathering.

But Danbaba warned the method requires all parts to work. Liberia’s average rice production hovers between 1 and 1.3 tons per hectare — about a sixth of the global standard of six tons per hectare. Under conventional farming, with degraded seeds that have been recycled for generations, and no mechanization to ease the labor, there is barely enough incentive to farm at scale. Yields are so low, the economics barely work

In Grand Bassa, women farmers are using proper SRI planting methods, spacing rice in neat rows. But the results were limited by poor seed quality. He said harvesting rice by hand, cutting one stalk at a time—is slow, labor-intensive work that could be sped up by the use of mechanical tools.

“These are some of the things that need to change immediately,” he said.

Nigerian experts urge Liberia to follow their blueprint

Governor Umar Namadi said his state had embraced the system not as a donor project but as economic policy that, importantly, engaged private business. Jigawa is now a Nigerian breadbasket —one of the top rice producers, alongside wheat, sesame, hibiscus, and vegetables, within a few years of focused policy effort.

Namadi described a 12-point agenda anchored in agricultural transformation: “transitioning from subsistence farming to integrated production, processing, and market linkages.” The state established a farm mechanization company operating a fleet of 300 tractors and 60 combine harvesters, distributed across 60 mechanization centers across 30 constituencies. It deployed 1,700 agricultural extension agents. It signed MOUs with AfricaRice, and with Indian seed companies.

And crucially, it did not try to do it alone. The private sector — represented at the event in Liberia by SILVEX International, an agribusiness that runs both in-grower and out-grower schemes across 27 local government areas in Kano and Jigawa – provided financing, technical advisory support, and guaranteed purchasing agreements at prevailing market prices. Farmers had a guaranteed market to sell to. With the right economics, he said, scale followed.

“The government played an enabler role,” Namadi said. “With consistent policy and infrastructure to support private sector growth through targeted investment and improved extension services. This experience shows that with the right systems, political will, and collaborative approach, agricultural transformation and sustainable food security are achievable within a relatively short period of time.”

Liberia’s Ministry of Agriculture welcomed the Nigerians visit and their advice. “Most of our farmers have been practicing this unknowingly to themselves,” said Austin G. Yeeney, acting director for extension at the ministry. “But the Ministry of Agriculture is looking into that deeply because it is a more economical way of rice cultivation.”

Officials are also promoting composting and water management practices. “We train the farmers on water control structure and how to produce their own compost,” Yeeney said. “So they can produce rice two to three times a year.”

Pilot projects are already underway in several counties, including Grand Bassa, where ministry technicians and Concern Worldwide are training farmers and setting up demonstration plots. But officials say the national rollout will focus first on Liberia’s major food-producing regions. “When we compare yield and see that the results are encouraging, then we can begin to roll it out into other rice-producing counties,” Yeeney said.

To address the challenges identified by the SRI experts, the ministry says it is constructing 13 mechanization hubs across the country equipped with tractors, harvesters and threshers. “These hubs are going to have all of the machinery needed for rice production,” he said.

The government says all of the interventions fall under Liberia’s National Agriculture Development Plan, which targets 50,000 hectares of lowland rice production by 2030. But Yeeney warned that long-term success will also require farmers to move away from dependency on free government support. “When you are doing agriculture as a business, when you have been given the initial support, you should be able to build from that,” he said

Across Liberia’s rice sector, a consensus is emerging: the techniques exist, and the early results are real. Experts say Liberia’s rice revolution now depends on investment and political will.

Article source: https://fpa.news/liberias-rice-revolution-experts-say-a-proven-model-offers-hope-to-break-dependence-on-imports-and-reduce-hunger/