Senegal Farmers Work to Improve Peanut Crops
Locating, affording and cultivating resilient peanut seeds have been challenges for Senegal's farmers.
Supporting Senegal
Food Security for Senegal
Join ActionAid's efforts to ensure Senegal's poor have access to clean water and food.
Donate Now
"Peanuts are the main crop in Senegal; It’s our cotton," said ActionAid country director Moussa Faye. "But, poor quality of seed equals poor yield and farmers buy any grains to plant.”
When poor farmers purchase low-quality seeds, their crops are not as fruitful as they could be, and it hinders a farmer’s ability to provide food for their family and garner an income from selling goods.
With an eye toward improving crop quality and producing the associated seeds used to generate resilient peanut trees, Senegalese enlisted ActionAid's assistance to embark on a seed multiplication program – a process of making high yielding, drought resistant varieties of crops.
“Farmers wanted to do their own seed multiplication, so we thought if we don’t help farmers control their own seed multiplication, we would end up relying on seeds being produced by big companies and sold to farmers, so we started helping farmer multiply seed," Moussa said.
Under the ActionAid program, we provide farmers with the money for the seeds, fertilizer and training, while they provide the land and labor. A contract with Senegal’s Agriculture Research Institute has also been penned so the organization monitors and trains farmers on the proper seed multiplication protocol over the four years it takes to produce the ideal crop.
A woman in Senegal loads peanuts into a machine to begin processing the crop.
Today, there are more then 10,000 members involved with seed multiplication, as well as the processing and marketing aspects associated with selling peanut products and seeds.
“Since we all got together to increase our production of peanuts and also to start growing vegetables and fruit, we have managed to buy oil and rice at the market and feed our families better,” said Adama Mgane, a mother of five living in Thiakho-Maty and the head of the local ground nut producers group.
Although many in Senegal say their families have benefited from the project, hurdles still exist.
One issue is ensuring that farmers buy the resilient seed needed to improve their annual crops instead of turning to the cheaper varietal.
“We want the government to subsidize the multiplied seed [initiative] so the farmers could buy it and renew all the seed capital in the country,” Moussa explained. “At some point we will have a lot of seeds in our hands but not necessarily enough buying capacity from the farmers.”