Reported by Hu Panpan from Hunan Daily
Recently?the 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) was held in Beijing, 2024. Previously, Hunan Daily Press has dispatched a reporting team to the Gambia. The team conducted interviews themed “Friends and Partners” to learn about Gambia-China agricultural cooperation outcomes on the spot.
On September 2, 2024, Hunan Daily published an in-depth report titled When You Pick up the Bowl, You Will Think of Chinese Experts. It also presented pictures and videos to tell the stories about how the agricultural experts from Yuan Longping High-tech Agriculture Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as the “Longping Hi-tech”) assisted the Gambia in improving paddy rice output.
Located in Central River Division, the Gambia, Maruo farms stands as a significant Gambia-China agricultural cooperation outcome. On Maruo farms, the reporter from Hunan Daily noticed that local farmers drove the harvesters and rice transplanters imported from China to reap truckloads of full grains and sow the seeds of hope for a plentiful harvest.
“Mechanized reaping and transplanting are unthinkable in my father’s generation.” By the side of farmland, Musa Darboe, the owner of the two agricultural machines and the manager of Maruo farms, told the reporter from Hunan Daily. In 2019, Musa Darboe resigned from his job which offered an annual salary of USD 100,000 and returned to his hometown from the U.S. to grow paddy rice.
At that time, there wasn’t any paddy rice harvester throughout the Gambia. In the first year, Musa Darboe grew 3 hectares of paddy rice and manually harvested or threshed the rice, culminating in meager rice yields.
Just when Musa Darboe was ready to give up farming, Chinese agricultural experts turned up. Huang Zhi, a post-85s young man from Changsha, who is not tall but has a cheerful personality, quickly got acquainted with local farmers.
The Gambia has vast flat fertile land and favorable conditions for agricultural mechanization. However, affected by local climates and irrigation methods, the field water level is uncontrollable, which causes inconvenience to the use of agricultural machines. Undoubtedly, without agricultural machines, there will be a lack of agricultural machine operators, auxiliary components and parts, and maintenance personnel.
Under the leadership of Huang Zhi, local people leveled the land and built water conservancy facilities to keep the water level under control. Finally, agricultural machines could be driven into the farmland. Longping Hi-tech transported rice transplanters and harvesters here from China, through which Huang Zhi and the experts of his team conducted their training in the fields, cultivating a batch of local agricultural machine operators and maintenance personnel.
The conditions of the farmland improved year by year. In the year that followed, Musa Darboe expanded the area for planting paddy rice from 3 hectares to 15 hectares. He also transitioned from single-cropping rice to double-cropping rice. To his delight, the paddy rice output increased to 7 tons per hectare, which was more than twice the local average output.
Maruo farms has now become the largest and first fully mechanized farm in the Gambia. The farm’s paddy rice planting area has expanded to 2,000 hectares. It also offers agricultural machinery services to over 2,800 farmers in the surrounding areas. The overall grain output per unit area in the local region has nearly doubled, driven by Maruo farms.
“In 2023, the Gambia achieved its highest paddy rice output in history, thanks in large part to agricultural cooperation between the Gambia and China.” Demba Sabally, Minister of Agriculture of the Gambia, informed the reporter from Hunan Daily that Longping Hi-tech’s team provided comprehensive assistance for various stages of the Gambian agricultural production, including seed preparation, plowing, transplanting, harvesting, and processing. He expressed hope that the Gambia’s national grain output would continue to increase with China’s assistance.
On July 19, Hu Panpan, a reporter from Hunan Daily and Jallow, a reporter from The Point, conducted a joint interview on Maruo farms located in Central River Division, the Gambia. Photographed by Fu Cong and Chen Meng, reporters from Hunan Daily
In Sapu, Central River Division, the Gambia on July 19, Huang Zhi (second from right), an agricultural expert from Longping Hi-tech who assisted the Gambia, was instructing local farmers on raising rice seedlings. Photographed by Fu Cong and Chen Meng, reporters from Hunan Daily
In Sapu, Central River Division, the Gambia on July 19, a Chinese agricultural expert was instructing a local villager on how to reap paddy rice.Photographed by Fu Cong and Chen Meng, reporters from Hunan Daily
