APA-Dakar (Senegal) With Senegal aiming to achieve food sovereignty in the near future, the country’s agricultural stakeholders are warning that the authorities need to address a number of challenges before they can do so.
By Oumar Dembele
Travelling many kilometres, farmers from the ‘Conseil National de Concertation et de Cooperation des Ruraux’ (National council for rural consultation and cooperation, CNCR) met journalists in Dakar on Thursday 25 January to explain the challenges that “hamper the ability of family farms to feed the Senegalese people and ensure our country’s food sovereignty.”
Aware of the issues at stake, they took the opportunity to call on “current and future Senegalese leaders” to consider their proposals for achieving the objectives set for the agricultural sector.
These proposals, which these rural people are urging candidates in the February 2024 presidential election to incorporate into their campaign “policies and programmes,” are set out in six points by the CNCR.
According to its President Nadjirou Sall, the first is to “promulgate and implement a decree formalising the legal status of family farms.” This measure should “facilitate their access to credit and financing opportunities, as well as promoting the empowerment of women and youth employment.”
In addition to social protection for people working in agriculture and the organisation of the first session of the ‘Conseil Supérieur d’Orientation Agro-sylvo-pastoral’ (Higher Council for Agri-Sylvo-pastoral Guidance) in 2024, they are also calling for “quantitative and qualitative” improvements in funding for family farms, the adoption and implementation of a national strategy for integrating young people into the agro-sylvo-pastoral and fisheries value chains, and the adoption of a land policy that “secures in the long term” the agro-sylvo-pastoral and fisheries activities of family farms.
For Mr Sall, these various challenges are currently hampering the modernisation of farming in Senegal.
There is therefore an urgent need to “sustainably increase” the productivity of family farms in the face of climate change, “better remunerate their work and protect consumers.”
This presupposes “public policies that are defined and implemented in a concerted manner, and that give responsibility to private players and above all, to professional farming organisations,” the President of the CNCR says.
Founded in the 1970s in response to challenges posed by drought and structural adjustment policies, this movement sees itself as a key player in rural development in Senegal. Its mission is to promote sustainable peasant farming, capable of guaranteeing food security and contributing to job creation and economic development in Senegal.
For more than half a century, the CNCR has waged a series of “crusades” that have led to significant advances in a number of areas, including recognition of the role of farmer organisations in the governance of the agricultural sector, the establishment of mechanisms for consultation and funding for agriculture, and social protection for people working in agriculture through the Agro-sylvo-pastoral Orientation Law (LOASP) enacted in 2004, Nadjirou Sall explains.
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