Clearing off the swamps
New farm building
Preparing for the seeds
Successful planting
Our Rice fields
Staff training
New equipment
Staff meeting
Harvesting
Activities
Men and Women clearing the lowland land digging the irrigation canal in early February, 2020
Khalipha Bility with the first cohort of farmer-trainees. They are preparing for a three month mobile field based training to use and maintain rice production machines.
The main drain of the irrigation canal completed to regulate water flow from the peripheral canals
Rice nursery in full development as the canal are completed to begin transplanting in plots after 21 days. We are exploring new technologies to skip this labor intensive nursery development step by direct seeding in the plots using a drum seeder
Plowed field ready for transplanting. Notice the dark rich soil enriched with nutrients flowing from the upland where rice is traditionally grown in Liberia. Medlife Liberia is working with farmers to adapt the non-traditional high yielding lowland ecosystem to boost rice production.
Field layout in plots size of 20 meters by 20 meters. With proper irrigation, pest and weed control, proper farm mechanization and planting high yielding seeds, Medlife Liberia demonstrated that it is possible to harvest three rice crops a year, double production using the same land mass, unlike shifting upland cultivation
Six weeks later. The variety is ready for harvest within three months after transplanting. Harvest is ten weeks away. Hopefully Medlife new harvesters will arrive in time.
Transplanting is phased-in to properly manage the fields, especially post- harvest. With proper mechanization farmer can accelerate the pace of translating ten-fold. The rice on the right side is one month older than the one on the left side
Children in Jarmu Village admiring Medlife new power tiller and discussing and arguing about how it works. Proper farm mechanization is the future of rice farming
Mobile training in action. A young and happy farmer using a power tiller for the first time. The training model Medlife is developing with GIZ under the developpp arrangement is to train the farmers in the field. It builds on the thinking of the dual system common in Germany