“You can see volunteer crops here and you can imagine what the mechanized farming and sowing will produce in this land” – Jonglei Agriculture Minister Mayen Ngor
Jonglei has put forty tractors at the use of farmer groups. Under the scheme, farm groups can lease tractors while they pay in installments.
“We encourage farmers, who are opening farm land, to continue with the scaling up of food production in Jonglei state,” said State Agriculture Minister Mayen Ngor told New Times last week.
“Our target is that Jonglei state and south Sudan as a whole, should be self sufficient with food production by using mechanized farm as we pro-claim a new nation”.
There are nearly forty tractors engaged in land plough across state. This is to boast small scale farmers with better alternative to increasing their farm sizes,’ said the minister. “Not necessarily organized farmers who can use them [tractors], even individuals who have the capacity to buy fuel, hire tractor driver and maintain their farms can hire the tractors.”
The tractor drivers’ determination to continue plough more Fadden is never diminishing despite delayed rains and the cultivation progress.
At Panyagor farmers group some 1,000 Fadden north-east Panyagor is completely ploughed and sowing of seeds has began. Twic East county Commissioner Dau Akooi Jurkuch says the community is responding very well.
“We are encouraging our people to produce their own food because our land is very fertile,” said the commissioner, adding that the response was through thin and thick “because people just returned from displacement during the war and are reluctant to cultivate.”
The expectations are high given food scarcity. War destroyed the tradition of cultivation. Civil war up-rooted local communities and pushed them to north Sudan as Internally Displaced People (IDP) or neighboring countries as refugees. When the government of Jonglei state ministry of agriculture came up with the policy of extension farming, the news struck low but now that the reality is likely to be realized, the hopes are stepping up again.
FERTILE SOILS
The fertility of soil here is visible. Seeds from last season crops germinated on their own. The minister of agriculture, who had worked as an agricultural practitioner for over ten years with non-governmental organization is confident that a good yield is assured.
“You can see volunteer crops here and you can imagine what the mechanized farming and sowing will produce in this land,” Minister Mayen said as he stood in a garden owned wildlife officer in Paker Payam, Twic East county.
For small scale farmers in Twic East, the government involvement in helping local people in production of enough food is a major yardstick of seriousness.
“When the government officials speak, it is something they do but when the implementation is done, we are encouraged and challenged to work hard,” said Deng Atem, a resident of Panyagor, the headquarters of Twic East county.
Apart from producing sufficient food, the ministry of agriculture in Jonglei state also intends to use local mechanized farming as a test for the viability of even large-scale farming.
“We want to see if this mechanized farming is efficient so that when foreign investors come, they will be sure of good yield,” said minister Mayen Ngor. He said the farm owned by local people will “introduce agriculture potentiality of south Sudan to investors.”
