Agriculture Household Tracking Survey - 2010

First Round

The Government of Sierra Leone has made agriculture its top priority. Yet, a lack of information about the status of the sector can inhibit effective policy formulation, planning, implementation and performance evaluation. In view of this, in August 2009, the Government of Sierra Leone requested and supported an independent exercise, the Agricultural Household Tracking Survey (AHTS), to obtain accurate and credible agricultural data that can serve as a baseline for longitudinal analyses of Sierra Leone's progress in agricultural development over the next several years.

The AHTS focused on a subset of eight "core crops" comprised of five food crops (rice, cassava, maize, groundnut and sweet potato) and three tree cash crops (cacao, coffee and oil palm). Detailed data on these crops was collected in the eight "crop specific" sections of the AHTS and are provided in this AHTS Report. In addition, some basic data was collected across all crops as well as basic data on household characteristics. In addition, the AHTS collected some data on revenues, access to seeds from the formal sector and other aspects of agriculture that is designed to allow the Government of Sierra Leone to track whether subsistence farmers are becoming more linked to commercial systems over time.

In general, agricultural household surveys, such as the AHTS, are used to provide a representative picture of the status of farming households in a country. The random selection of the sample and its large size allow for a high level of confidence in the final results, even after taking into account issues such as survey measurement error. The AHTS was designed with an exceptionally large sample size so the impact of measurement error on the country level aggregates would be minimal.

The AHTS covered a final sample of 8,840 households, the largest household-level sample for an agricultural survey in Sierra Leone. However, since comparable agricultural data have not been collected before this, the AHTS results do not allow any comparisons over time. The AHTS questionnaire was designed to capture the decisions farmers make, the yields and production levels achieved by the average household, as well as the access to services and technology, food security and other dimensions of agricultural households in Sierra Leone. The survey design followed international standards, with adaptations to local context through extensive field testing. The target sample size was chosen following rigorous power calculations based on SSL data available prior to the AHTS.

This report covers the most salient features of household agriculture in Sierra Leone from the AHTS. The results also highlight areas for policy interventions that could improve productivity, food security and livelihoods of farming households more generally in Sierra Leone. These areas include:-
i. Improvements in inputs use and planting practices could dramatically improve productivity
a. Levels of fertilizer use are low, particularly for the main staples, rice and cassava;
b. The adoption of improved seed varieties remains low - for example, only 2% of rice farming households have ever cultivated one
of the NERICA varieties;
c. Planting practices often involve broadcasting on upland farms and tree crops are often intercropped (not just with other tree crops
for shading purposes);
ii. Households' access to and interaction with markets remains low - for example, 92% of sampled households reported that their
main point of sale for threshed rice was at farm gate (64% for clean rice). AHTS communities reported an average distance of 6.6
miles to the nearest market and 8.8 miles to the nearest permanent market;

iii. There is substantial scope to improve rural infrastructure. This includes both very localized infrastructure such as drying floors and
storage facilities, as well as larger scale infrastructure such as roads. For example, 49% of farmers harvesting cereals stored their
cereals in a room inhabited by the household; only 13% of households used a cement floor for drying. Out of 880 communities
surveyed as part the AHTS community module, 25% reported a walking distance to the nearest motorable road of more than 30
minutes during the dry season.

These communities are the most likely to lack access to markets for agricultural inputs and outputs. 67% of communities were listed as motorable during the dry season; iv. Financial access - much as improved practices are important for farmers, the cost associated with some of these improved practices increases the need for financial services. A lack of these services can create a bottleneck for yield growth and productivity improvements. The AHTS data show that 68% of respondent households who did not borrow money said they had nobody to apply to for a loan and the majority of farmers with existing loans borrowed on the informal market; v. There is need for continued dissemination of better, more sustainable cultivation practices, via continued investments in extension and investments in developing new cultivation techniques and new seed varieties.