In Wee District, Grand Bassa County, the United Community Agriculture Cooperative Society (UCACS) has become beacon of hope for cassava cuttings distribution in the area to other farmers and have announced plans to step up its cassava processing, but calls on the Smallholder Agriculture Development for Food and Nutrition Security (SADFONS) project provide the corporation with Cassava packaging and Parching machines to boost their cassava value chain.
UCACS’s lead farmer, Victor Kpehdyu made the disclosure Tuesday, during a one-day impact assessment visit by ActionAid Liberia’s Team in the area.
The team is evaluating the impact of the SADFONS Project on the cooperative and across other farmers within Grand Bassa.
In 2024, the United Community Agriculture Cooperative Society began benefiting from the SADFON project as a Cassava Cotton multiplier. According to Victor, the SADFONs project has not only boosted farmersconfidence, increase their cassava cottons production across farming communities in Wee, but it has boosted the cooperative income generation.
“I am an out-grower from SADFONs, and the cuttings we produce are even given to farmers all around here.” Victor Kpehdyu said.
“Before SADFON came, we were having low production, but since SADFONS came in, we have been able to know the size of cassava farm we now make, and we have been able to cultivate 3 hectares of land processing 300 bags of cassava, and we supply farmers with cuttings” Victor told the impact review team.
With SADFONS support, the group has been able to expand their production beyond the cooperative. They now have access to a large storage facility, a large warehouse that was constructed by SADFONS.
The cooperative also described the SADFON support as a gain-changer and has made the cooperative the singular-most supplier of the improved cassava cuttings distribution to farmers in the area, thereby giving farmers in and outside of the cooperative easy access to cassava cottons.
“We used to struggle with storage for the past 11 to 15 years, but since SADFONS came and built this storage facility with shelves for us, we now have some relief when it comes to storing raw and harvested and processed cassava”.
The group just does not supply cassava cottons to farmers, but they are now the major producer of garri and fufu to customers from LAC plantation, Firestone, and from across Grand Bassa County.
They reported a growing demand for their processed garri and fufu products from the public, which they cooperative say is putting production pressure on the cooperative, But Victor and members say the manual parching of the cassava makes it difficult to meet such demands.
However, Victor and his farmers have therefore set a new goal. They want to transition from manual cassava parching to now using the cassava parching and packaging machine to meet the growing market demands and ease the hard labor among members parching the cassava with their hands over scorching fire heat, which they say also takes them several days.
The group already currently has a cassava grinder that was provided by another NGO. The grinder has the capacity to produce up to 7 metric tons of cassava, but they stressed that parching such a huge quantity of cassava with hands manually over fire, is challenging for the women.
UCACS is therefore appealing to SADFONS to provide the cooperative with a garri parching and packaging machine.
“The help that they are giving us, they shouldn’t stop, they should work with us and we also will work with them, we thank them but they should not forget about our request, we need a cassava parching machine. Mercy Diggs, a member of the cooperative said during an interview.
With a garri parching machine, the cooperative say they would now be able to process more than 7 metric tons of parched garii and expand their supplies to consumers and customers, and as well put money in farmers’ hands as well as nearby by towns and villages who could also access the machine.
“For many of us, it’s from the cassava farm we help to support our children and reduce some of the financial pressure on our husbands,” Diggs added.
“The initiative is helping us avoid running out of cash for basic family needs.”
Farmers expressed strong support for the continuation of the SADFONS project but recommended additional interventions to strengthen their cassava processing.
Mercy Diggs, and other members of the United Community Agriculture Cooperative Society (UCACS) are also asking the SADFONS project to consider providing farmers access to credit loans that enable farmers to hire labor force and to expand their farms and increase their incomes.
“If SADFONS can provide loans and additional farming equipment, our production will increase and we will make more and change our lives,” she said.
The farmers made all these disclosures and recounted these successes during a one day assessment visit by ActionAid International which is conducting the impact review of the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), review of the SADFONS project throughout Liberia.
