Africa-Press – South-Sudan. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (UNFAO) has donated numerous agricultural inputs to a group of women in Alel Chok village, Western Bahr el-Ghazal State, to boost the productivity of their crops.
Speaking during the handover ceremony last Friday, Joseph Matere, the FAO state field officer, said the donation was a fulfilment of the promise the organisation made to the small farming groups in the area.
“Today we have fulfilled our promises. We have brought you equipment, what is called a power tiler, for digging the land. We have also brought you machines for making groundnut paste, milling the maize, and melting. We also brought your equipment for harvesting honey, including the clothes for women to wear so that the bees can’t attack them, ” he said.
Matere said when he last visited the group, they complained of a poor transport network which prevented them from exporting their produce to Wau town.
“That is why FAO brought one Tuktuk which will take care of that problem,” he said.
Matere stressed that the donation was a part of their safer projects to work with the cooperatives in the country.
He encouraged the group to remain united and work hard to achieve their goals of eradicating hunger as well as generating income.
Matere said the Alel Chok women’s group has been one of the most active women’s groups among the other 10 groups FAO has been supporting in the state.
He said the women deserve to get every piece of equipment to increase their productivity.
Empowerment
Meanwhile, the State Minister of Cabinet Affairs, Arkangelo Anyar Anyar, thanked FAO for empowering the communities through agricultural activities, saying it was the only thing that could make their people self-reliant.
Anyar said it was time for the state’s farmers to start growing their food, eating what they grow locally, and improving their revenue.
“We have been fighting a man-to-man war. Now it has ended, and we have another war, which is hunger. It is dangerous, so, we can only fight it through intensive farming, and we have to start it now, ” he added.
Anyar said in the past, FAO had been making people dependent instead of giving them everything they needed to support their own families.
Akol Akol, the chairperson of the Marialbaai small farmers’ group, said the donations from the FAO would enable them to improve their work.
“We are thankful for the donations from our partners for the huge help to the group. The things we are receiving today are going to help us a lot. I believe it will improve our agricultural productivity, ” he said.
Akol appealed to FAO to construct a store for the farmers to keep their produce, saying they currently have no store for stocking their harvested crops.
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