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Farming experts from one developing country are often best placed to help solve problems in other developing countries with similar conditions. As a former senior farm manager from the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture, Dudung Abdul Adjid (pictured on left), put it, "At least we experienced the advice ourselves. It's not a theory from reading books."
Mr. Abdul Adjid has invaluable experience gained over a long career helping Indonesia become virtually self-sufficient in rice, a remarkable achievement in a vast country which today must feed 185 million people. Recently retired as Director-General of Food Crops Production, he knows the steps that must be taken to increase food production, including the development of a national strategy and the introduction of high-yielding cereal varieties and advanced farming techniques.
Indonesia has made great strides in food production, and is now prepared to offer lessons from its experience to other developing countries, such as the Gambia, a tiny sliver of a West African country with a population of only one million. The Gambia also grows rice but not enough even to feed its small population. It must import 60,000 to 70,000 tonnes of rice a year at substantial cost to its modest national budget.
In 1994, the Gambian Minister of Agriculture was attending the Non-Aligned Conference on Food and Agriculture in Bali, Indonesia and began comparing notes with his Indonesian counterpart. The Indonesian Minister offered to send a couple of experts to the Gambia to study the country's problems in rice production and suggest how the African country should go about drawing up its own national strategy.
So it came about that Mr. Abdul Adjid, and a senior colleague, Mr. Moch Ayat Wrehaspaty, retired Director of Food Crop Production, were sent to the Gambia. The Food and Agriculture Organization was there to faciliate the exchange, which took place in April, under the auspices of its programme for the use of experts for Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries (TCDC). The Indonesian government paid the home salary of the two experts while the Gambia arranged board and lodging, with FAO providing the national and international travel, medical insurance, US$50 per day to the expert towards living expenses and a small subsidy to the employer.
What did the visit achieve? According to Mr. Abdul Adjid, their visit acted as a valuable catalyst in the long process of designing and implementing a national intensification strategy for rice growing.
"We met with government officials and experts, visited the peasants' fields, recounted our experiences and compared problems," he said. "We certainly found similarities with Indonesia. The average farm size in both countries is less than one hectare. Growing conditions are also similar in both. On the other hand,Gambia is more or less like Java was 30 years ago, for example, in literacy levels. And the big difference in food growing is that Indonesia has a national plan and Gambia doesn't."
"The Gambia has the potential to grow more rice. They get 1.7 tonnes of rice per hectare on irrigated land and one to 1.2 tonnes on swamp land. In Java we get five tonnes on average and the best farmers get 12 tonnes," he said.
"The Gambians tried to grow more rice by simply improving irrigation but this did not result in increased yields because although they have water they don't have the improved inputs like high-yielding seed. We are giving them the advice that, in principle, coordination of their farming sector is more important than subsidies for farm inputs."
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