The world does not have food. The global coronavirus pandemic has revealed that to world leaders and countries. Along with Africa, Asia and the Middle East are three parts of the world that would experience the brunt of the world food crisis.
As food security continues to wade in the shadow of the global pandemic, ordinary people like Mohamed Gibril Kamara who is a civil servant in Sierra Leone have already taken up the challenge to provide for the masses.
Donning overalls on the weekend after a long week of wearing suits to his office, Mohamed Gibril Kamara heads to his 35-acre farm in Maboka in the Northern province where he grows high value food crops including cashews and plantains.
‘I have this passion for farming. I do believe there is wealth in farming. I want to contribute in feeding the people of Sierra Leone. As a farmer if you grow food then you’ll have this chance and opportunity to feed the people.’
His dream to own a farm to feed the people started in Cambodia.
‘I travelled some time ago in 2013, to Cambodia and I was fortunate to see this big cashew plantation. I spoke with people working there and I saw the kind of profit they were making. So when I returned home, I decided to do cashew farming because there was a market and to help my family make more money.’
First he bought the land. Then, he started planting his cashew trees.
‘We started with 1000 trees in 2015 and we started harvesting two years back. We are making some profit and thinking of increasing to at least 2500 trees.’
In 2019, he started planting some plantain trees.
‘We started with 1000 trees but now we have 2000 trees. Within ten months the plantain started bearing fruit.’
Despite being a very busy man planting and harvesting, he decided to add some pineapples within the farm.
‘It’s a lot of work but it’s also all about commitment. The weekends with my family working the farm is a joy.’
Believing that agriculture is the future and the solution to the world’s food security problems, Mohamed aims to have 10,000 trees on his farm by 2022. Then, he’ll also go farming full-time.
