Farmers in Yei River County of central Equatoria state have appealed to their local county government to improve security in the county.
Since the aftermath of conflict in the area in 2016, farmers find it difficult to access their farms outside the town due to insecurity which has made them resort to small-scale subsistence farming within the town.
James Gale, a farmer in Yei, says, there is a vast agricultural land in the outskirts of the town that the farmers can use for large-scale cultivation but are curtailed by insecurity.
‘’Insecurity is the obstacle that is why we do not use our lands, if we could be accessing the farmlands outside town, I am so sure Yei would be supplying the neighboring countries with produce,’’ Gale said. “I am urging the government to allocate us land. They must also solve the issue of insecurity. We want the government to support us by bringing us tractors, seeds, hoes, and other inputs.”
James Abure, another farmer who cultivates land 4 miles from the town, says his produce is ready but due to the insecurity, he finds it hard to harvest and bring it to the market.
‘’I am a farmer in Yei but my farmland is four miles away from the town and my crop is ready but to bring it to town has become a problem, so I am appealing to the government to look into that,’’ Abure said.
Meanwhile, Dudu Emelia Kenyi, the acting agriculture director in the county said farmers have been displaced from their homes to the internally displaced people’s camps and this has led to the drop in agricultural production.
‘’During this rainy season, insecurity also disturbed a lot because farmers have been displaced from their original place of farming now to a place where they cannot get vast land to cultivate,” Kenyi said.
She urged livestock farmers and those tilling the land to always coexist to avoid problems of animals destroying crops
“Let the animal herders and crop producers coexist. They should understand each other and when it is time for growing crops, let the animal owners control their animals,” Kenyi advised. ‘’There are other organizations that give inputs like seeds and tools, so let crop growers take these seeds and move to the wetlands.”