By Mohamed Kamara
The Executive Director of the National Fertilizer Agency, Mr. Andrew B. Musa Koroma has informed that his agency will conduct a nationwide verification exercise on the locally made fertilizer.
The purpose of this exercise, Mr. Koroma said that is to determine whether the locally made fertilizer is good for crop cultivation or not. He added that, the exercise will assist our local farmers to employ the right method for more production.
However, farmers in the Rural Area, has condemned the exercise claiming that its will lead to low harvest this year.
According to Mr. Saidu Conteh a farmer at Ronietta in the Lower Yoni Chiefdom in Tonkolili District, vehemently condemned the verification exercise by the agency, claiming that it is in appropriate. Mr. Conteh further expressed the challenges they are currently facing with the unavailability fertilizer in the country, noting that, this is due to the war in Ukraine. He continued by stating that Ukraine is the only recognized institution by the Food and Agricultural Organization for producing the best fertilizer throughout the world.
Since the commencement of the war in February 2022, he said that the supply of fertilizer from Ukraine has been cut down. Mr. Conteh said, farmers especially in developing countries, have to look for other alternatives. As a result of that, he said that they adopted their own local methods without government sponsorship. Mr. Conteh said in Senegal for example, Local Farmers are currently using the Japanese’s method to combine waist into manure, stating further that, it has increased production more than the imported fertilizer. Therefore, he has called on Mr. Andrew Bah to respect the outcome of the local research as an alternative to the imported fertilizers.
“We want to discourage dependency on global market,” he concluded.As parents, teachers and pupils jubilate over BECE result…
