Editor,

Please allow me space in your widely read newspaper to express my views on the prospect of agriculture, as it is a topical issue, these days.

The rainy season has come, amid all the talk of readiness to revolutionise agricultural production this year. Of course everybody is aware of the state of food production in the world. The people we have depended on all these years for our regular supply of the staple food, in the case of the Gambia, rice, have made it clear that human beings are no more their priority. Fuel production is their concern.

It is either we go back to the land, or we starve to death. Simple! Or still, we can as well change our diet. But even with that, we would still have to make some effort to sustain ourselves. I think the best thing for us to do is engage in cultivating what we consume. As President Yahya Jammeh has always maintained, it is only if we are in charge of what we eat that we can claim to have genuine independence.

Remember that it was Luis Farakan that said we can never be independent while we have our mouth in the kitchens of Europe and America.

I want to take this opportunity to echo our dynamic president in his unrelenting call for Gambians to go back to the land. The authorities at the department of state for agriculture should heed the president's call and stop making endless and fruitless travelling in the name of workshops which only increase the level of poverty on the ordinary Gambian. One can only make a real agriculturist if they practice as one.

It is not by placing yourself in the Kombos, without even making a single visit to the farm, that you can become a good agriculturist. Let us copy our leader, President Jammeh. His is a leadership by example. I want to conclude by congratulating the Daily Observer for their bold step in declaring this year as year of agriculture. I hope they will do something in ensuring that Gambians get to know about the progress of the season.

Lamin Juwara.
Lamin Village