Sometimes the solutions are right under our noses. Back in 2014, after visiting my mother’s village in her native Sierra Leone, I was shocked and dismayed to discover that in 2022, Sierra Leone imported $161M in Rice, mainly from India ($79.3M), China ($60.1M), Uruguay ($12.8M), Brazil ($3.56M), and Thailand ($1.45M).
‘But’ I said to my mother, ‘Sierra Leone is a rice cultivating country, how could this be possible and there is so much poverty?’. I was sadly told that rice cultivation is back breaking work and after Sierra Leone’s independence from the British in 1967, it was difficult to get modern machinery into the country due to scarcity and the huge expense. Furthermore, civil war broke out 25 years later and disrupted farming families who needed to flee to the capital, or abroad - to never return. To exasperate the problem, young people didn’t want to go into agriculture. As a result, communities suffered from food and job insecurities and poverty became abject.
So, I had an idea, and asked myself as a British born Sierra Leonean, how hard could it be to plant rice?”
Let me set the scene. Back in the 1700s, enslaved Sierra Leoneans were taken to North Caroline to plant rice. The grains they sowed were most likely the grains that the enslaved communities brought over with them on that long and arduous trans-Atlantic journey. After years of trial and error, the rice crops became a huge success which made North Carolina the richest country in Antebellum America. They called the rice Carolina Gold.
Fast forward to May 2023 and I am sadly burying my mother who unfortunately died of Alzheimer’s disease. She passed down quite a bit of land to me and it got me thinking. So, here I am, standing in acres of amazing arable land surveying the vista. I asked myself, “is it possible to regain the glory of the rice cultivating era in Sierra Leone?” I could only try right?
So, in April 2024 I sowed 16 acres of rice as a test pilot. The soil is so fertile that the rice came up extremely lush, healthy and nutritious. If this is the same grain that was cultivated all those years ago in North Carolina, then we have come full circle and what a product!
The rice has grown 2ft already and it will be ready to harvest in October 2024. I am beyond excited.
I am raising £100,000 for a second-hand combine harvester
To harvest the rice, To pay the farmers, To feed the community, and To market and sell the rest so I can do it all over again next year.
I would love to share the rice with you as you share my journey to raise this amount, no matter how small you donate.
The highest doner will have the opportunity to come with me to Matamp City to harvest the rice and speculate on what we should do next.
Who knows, it may just change everything. And by the way, I am calling the rice, Matamp Gold.