Crops like cassava are a staple food in Liberia, but experts like Jonathan Greenham are flying with MAF to help farmers develop their business with the right know-how and equipment.
If it was not for a MAF flight from Liberia’s capital Monrovia to Harper in Maryland County, Jonathan Greenham admits: “I would not have come to Maryland.”
The senior adviser was in Liberia to help local entrepreneurs to raise more income for their communities by expanding production and marketing of crops like cassava, a popular crop in the West African nation.
“I’ve driven to all the other places I had to visit, but I would have missed out on meeting the people here – and I’m trying to get a sense overall of what is going on with the various people we are helping across the country,” he said.
I’m trying to get a sense overall of what is going on with the various people we are helping across the country.
“It’s a real challenge trying to make decisions about how best to help when you are reliant on photos or just someone talking on the phone, site visits really make a difference. I think it’s also encouraging for the partners that you have actually made the effort and spend time seeing what they are trying to do.”
“This is one of the harder places to get to, even though there’s other places that you spend 10 hours to get to and 10 hours to get back. You just need one guy stuck in a big hole and it’s not a trivial task to get past him.”
Jonathan is based in the USA but his work regularly brings him to Africa where he often flies with MAF.
He is optimistic about the potential for subsistence farmers in rural areas to develop commercial agricultural production to a point where it can bring more economic benefits for their communities.
“It’s definitely about scale, technology and getting value added locally,” he said.
“In Liberia, particularly in places like Maryland, you can be the best farmer, the best businessman, the best marketer but you'll get defeated by the externalities - the bad roads, the lack of access to things that you need.
“Even the simplest things like packaging, if you're trying to get into a higher value market, you need good packaging, but that costs money. Then, if you're going to produce in volume, you're looking at machinery.”
For that process to be successful, he believes in the importance of making direct connections with local entrepreneurs who have the ambition to reach new markets for crops like, plantain, sweet potato, cassava or pineapples. That’s where MAF flights, such as this shuttle between Monrovia and Harper, can help to make those face to face meetings possible.
“It's all about finding the people that want to try something new and working with them to figure out ways that you can support them,” Jonathan said.
“You can't make somebody into an entrepreneur, you have to want to be it. If you sit face to face with someone, you can build a relationship and you can build a much better understanding of where they are, what they've done, what they could potentially do, what their dream is.”
“It’s a million miles away from someone sending you an email saying, I want to process cassava. Now you're sitting there, you're looking at what they've done, what they haven't done, what they need to do and then you can have a conversation about it.
“And you can't do that very well over the phone or the email.”