It’s a sunny morning in the Gbedin community in the northern part of Liberia in Nimba County. The community has an estimated population of three thousand people and farmers are seen with their tools walking to their farms to start their day’s work.

21 years after the civil war, the community known for its rice cultivation, benefiting from the Gbedin rice station established by the Liberian government in the 1960s with assistance from the Taiwanese government, is still trying to return to the status quo. 

Gbedin is a village and agricultural centre in Sanniquellie-Mahn District, Nimba County, Liberia, on the Guinean border, roughly halfway between Ganta and Sanniquellie. The area is largely a swamp, including a man-made wetland with an irrigation system with channels, ditches, dams, and drainages. Farmers settled in quasi-cooperatives with much swamp land in the vicinity.

The suitability of the swamp for rice cultivation prompted the government in the 1960s to solicit technical assistance from the Taiwanese/Chinese Government to introduce modern agricultural methods to local rice farmers to discourage shifting cultivation which has greatly devastated the forests of Liberia nationwide.

The project known as the Gbedin Swamp Rice Project, was aimed at providing local farmers new alternatives for growing rice to increase yield. This site therefore became a demonstration site for farmers in the North. To encourage the participation of local farmers, the government provided incentives in terms of free medical care, housing and schools for farmers and their families.

The Gbedin Swamp Rice Project, especially up to the onset of the civil war in the 1990s employed large numbers of local people. The idea was to develop an area of 1200 hectares and train at least 600 families to cultivate the land.

Norhn Wilson is the current Chairperson of the Dokodan Farmer Cooperative which operated for years in Gbedin, Nimba County. With a governance structure in place, it was certificated by the Cooperative Development Agency (CDA).

Wilson’s face shatters as she remembers the suffering and the loss they encountered as a community. Reminiscing about the farm wealth they had in Gbedin but lost during Liberia’s civil crisis, Wilson’s voice quivers but keeps strong to narrate.

She mentioned that the rice station processed huge quantities of seed rice harvested from the farmlands of individual farmers and farmer cooperatives to supply the entire country.

The Government of Liberia in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) brought hope to farmers in 2023, with the launch of the Accelerated Community Development Programme (ACDP) in 2022. 

The government committed to providing support to understanding and addressing the real needs of vulnerable rural populations following a feasibility study across the country in 2020. The feasibility study captured key challenges that rural populations are experiencing. These include access to affordable energy, good health care services, safe drinking water and sanitation, access to feeder roads, and food security.

After being dormant for so long, the Dokodan Cooperative already established as a legal entity with a huge potential for low-land farm rice cultivation but lacked the capacity to fully function, was assessed to benefit from the deployment of machinery, farming tools, equipment, and other accessories as the 14 farmer cooperatives identified and selected by the project. 

The Cooperative which has 97 members including 46 women and two people with disabilities, received mechanized farm equipment such as a tractor and its implements, post-harvest processing machines, improved rice seeds, fertilizers, basic farming tools to improve and increase productivity, and capacity building training at different levels of governance, business development and the handling and management of agro-chemicals.

In addition, they received a low-value grant first tranche of $10,000.00 from the total budget of $20,000.00 to build a field operational office, renovate damaged farm canals and bridges within the farmland and take care of other operational expenses.

Dokodan has approximately 200 hectares (Over 400 acres) of farmland and six sites covered with rice. According to its members, they can produce large quantities of rice enough to supply the entire community. 

Before receiving these tools, the cooperative sought support from the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) to help them with a tractor for farming.

“Seeking support from the MOA for a tractor was very difficult. We didn’t get it the same time we needed it because the ministry supports other communities too,” said Wilson.

The Dokodan Farmer Cooperative also received rice planting machines, and post-harvest processing machines such as rice threshers, cassava milling machines, rice milling machines and sugar can milling machines.

Chairperson Wilson and her members appreciate the intervention by the government of Liberia through UNDP.

“Since the reactivation of the cooperative and with the logistical, financial, and capacity-building support provided by the ACDP, our farmers are busy in the swamps cultivating low-land rice. We have been receiving support in the past from various partners including some UN agencies, but the current intervention through the ACDP is a huge and lifetime initiative that goes beyond the project’s lifespan,” Madam Wilson noted.

She mentioned that with the capacity-building and skills training provided through the programme, farmers are becoming more advanced and knowledgeable in mechanized farming methods and how to grow and manage the cooperative.

“The Dokodan Farmer Cooperative is eternally grateful to UNDP and its partners for providing this opportunity. We are gradually returning to the pre-war status where Gbendin used to be the seed bank, supplying many farmers with rice seeds,” says Norhn Wilson. 

“Our target land area for the swamp rice cultivation is 410 acres. We can assure you that, with the tractor and other farming equipment received from ACDP, by the end of the year, we will expand beyond this point,” the members of Dokodan boasted.

On a visit to Gbedin during the week of the celebration of United Nations Day, UNDP’s Resident Representative a. i. Anthony Ohemeng-Boamah encouraged the cooperative members to engage their children in farming at an early stage of their lives. He said the children can learn from their parents and invest in their education to be better prepared to inherit the wealth accrued from generational farmlands. 

Ohemeng-Boamah expressed his contentment towards the commitment of the community to farming and alluded that they contribute to human and food security, reducing poverty through agriculture, and other socio-economic activities.

He explained that, with farming and food chain supply, the cooperative is contributing towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1 and 2 which are No Poverty and Zero Hunger respectively. 

Overall, the cooperative contributes towards the achievement of SDGs 5 – Gender Equality, 10 – Reduced Inequalities, and 12 – Responsible Consumption Production.

Fortunately, the Gbedin Rice Station structure established in the 1980s was not demolished but looted during the war, taking away its processing equipment. It has now turned into a white elephant. However, the cooperative uses it as a warehouse or storage facility for its tools, and machinery and looks forward to reestablishing it as a fully operational post-harvest processing facility.