AHWEHDE Farmers Association Finds Relief as Cassava Processing Machines Donated by SADFONS Reduce Intensive Labor For Women & Children
Boosts Members’ Income
Grinding Cassava using her hand and the locally made grinder, Julie says took she and her young children several hours and days of hard labor. Some days, their fingers got grinded and the blood would roll down into the cassava, but yet, even with the pains, they still had to finish whatever bags or tubs full of cassava they had to grind.
This way of grinding cassava prior to Julie and her group - AHWEHDE Farmer Association receiving support from the Smallholder Agriculture Development Food and Nutrition Security (SADFON) was their only means of cassava processing.
Not a single member of AHWEHDE Farmer Association has not gotten a scar from this painstaking efforts of processing cassava, they told ActionAid Liberia’s Team conducting the GASFP Impact Assessment Review in Duogee Town, Grand Gedeh County.
“A lot has changed for us.” Julie Jearue, a mother of 6 said displaying how they used to grind the cassava using their hands.
“Nowadays, when I come from my cassava farm and I bring 2 to 3 bags of cassava; I just take it to the machine and 5 to 10 minutes are too long for the machine to get through grinding it all. But in the past, I and my children us to be grinding for about a whole day or sometimes 2 days.”
With the provision of a Cassava Grinding machine, Julie and members of their Farmer Association say they now take less time to grind and are now witnessing a sharp rise in their income and their children are now being saved from the intensive hard and risky labor.
Not only has Julie and her young children graduated from grinding cassava using their hands, but she is now witnessing an increase in her income she told ActionAid team. From grinding at least three to four bags of cassava, Julie says she earns up to $7,000 Liberian Dollars. As such, grinding three times within a week would mean earning her $21,000 Liberian Dollars.
In 2022, AHWEHDE Farmer Association was among several farming groups that began benefiting from SADFONS project funded by the the Global Agriculture Food and Security Program (GAFSP).
As a farmer’s group in the Cassava Value chain, SADFON supported the Association in cultivating four hectares of land growing only cassava and provided the group the cassava grinding machine, the cassava slicer, and the compressor.
Habakkuk Quoie, a 55-year-old farmer and father of 6 said from the cassava, he is now financially capacitated to educated all his children, unlike in the past. He narrative how two of his 6 children have now completed high school as a result of the boost in their income.
“Because of the machine, we can now process more cassava. In fact, we have people who are not members of our group coming from the other towns who often bring their cassava for us to grind, and we do that, charge them to money to grind their cassava and that money is put into our saving, and from the cassava, two of my children have completed high school.”
This, Habakkuk said has also become extra source of income generation for the association, while at the same time inspiring them to grow more cassava on their private farms and backyard gardens thereby boosting their individuals’ revenues and hard labor.
“SADFON bought us the machines and they took us from the headship that our women were facing here by grinding fufu and cassava with their hands.”
Habakkuk reflected as saying how they and members of their town once traveled as far as neighboring Ivory Coast to purchase Gari and Fufu for consumption, but he said they no longer travel to Ivory Coast because their farmer association is now processing their cassava into gari, fufu, and even archikay which now being bought by nearby towns and villages.
“We used to go and buy Fufu from Ivory Coast before we east here, but now, we are no more going to Ivory Coast, that’s why we happy for what SADFONS did for us.” Habakkuk explained.
Under the SADFON project, AHWEHDE Farmers Association say they received some awareness from the ministry of Agriculture team about the importance of cultivating backyard gardens, something admitted have increased their nutrition and healthy eating habit.
From their backyard gardens, members no longer purchase soup kind from the local market, and that they when harvest is not yet ready from the Association’s Farm members turn to their gardens where they feed and sell in to the local market thus boosting their income.
Despite all these game-changing and transformative journey of AHWEHDE Farmers Association, it has not been without challenges. They group expressed disappointment in the Ministry of Agriculture not meeting up with other key components and interventions the SADFONS project was to deliver on.
The Association’s chairperson and members named the lack of training from the Ministry of Agriculture on the usage of the three pieces of equipment SADFONS donated. To date, the group said they still struggle to operate the cassava slicing machine and compressor. As for the cassava grinder, they struggled and were able to learn it all by themselves without any formal training from the ministry.
“The MOA just came and put these machines down without showing us how to operate them. And when they even brought the machines, we the members of the association had to put own money together to transport it from Zwedru to Duogee here.” Amos Quiwea, the association’s chairperson said.
The group also pointed out the lack of supervision and support system to maintain and service the equipment, coupled with the lack of storage facility for their produce and lack of market linkages as some of the pressing challenges they want SADFONS and MOA to address moving forward.
The Association have set news goals. Key among their goals the chairperson said they plan to increase the land space for their cassava cultivation including plans to cultivate vegetable, but they say that can only happen provided if the Ministry of Agriculture fulfills all the indicators the project was to deliver on under the SADFONS project.
According to the Association, the MOA did not provide AHWEHDE cassava sticks, and seedings among many other things.