Willamette Medical Teams

Objectives It is our objective then to provide a tractor that would be made available to our partners in Sierra Leone. We have identified two partners with whom we would like to commence this project. It is our hope to accomplish the following objectives. We want to provide employment for area farmers to maintain the expanded properties that would be opened up to farming by having a mechanized tilling process. We would like to expand the amount of rice available to the people of Sierra Leone for both health and well being. We would like to generate profits that can be used for other humanitarian initiatives in Sierra Leone, including medical clinics and schools. World Market According to Lester R. Brown, who is President and Founder of the Earth Policy Institute, a think tank on world economic policy, “We are witnessing the beginning of the one of the greatest tragedies of history. The United States, in a misguided effort to reduce its oil insecurity by converting fuel into grain for cars, is generating global food insecurity on a scale never seen before.” Brown notes that world grain prices have increased dramatically on three separate occasions since WWII.	The Rice is Right!
	Goal: In 2008, the leadership of Willamette Medical Teams commissioned the acquisition and shipment of a 60-horse John Deere 5303 tractor to be sent to Sierra Leone with a disk harrow implement, a loader, and blade. The purpose of this tractor was to enhance rice growing initiatives in the Boli Rice area and in Njala Komboya Background Willamette Medical Teams began its association with Sierra Leone in the year 2002. We began by sending short term clinics from the US to the communities of Waterloo, Kenema, and Taiama. An issue that became apparent during our visits with patients in the clinic, is that much of the disease is precipitated by causal factors outside the realm of medicine. These include poverty, access to clean water, and access to food. Given the record of 80% unemployment, that has been sustained since the end of hostilities in that country since 2001, a subsistence-based economy is the underlying driver behind the multitude of problems affecting health. Since we began seeing patients in Waterloo, we joined with partners to effect, at least on a small scale, some of the problems that we identified in the clinic. For example, we have partnered with Rotary International to undergo rehabilitation of a dam at the Newton Dam site near Waterloo. We began a relationship with local fisherman to launch a boat, “the Barbara Gayle,” that would furnish both employment and access to protein for the citizens of the community of Tombo. At the request of several of our in-country partners, we also began exploring the option of developing an agricultural component to our humanitarian efforts, specifically focused in the area of rice. To that end, Willamette Medical Teams has been organized with the government as an international non-government organization (INGO) and has received certification from the Ministry of Agriculture to operate an agriculture enterprise in Sierra Leone.

	Even the kids got excited about the tractor coming to town!!
Each time the grain prices have increased, it has been a result of weather-reduced harvest. But now it is a matter of demand simply outpacing supply. In seven of the last eight years, global grain production has fallen short of consumption. These annual shortfalls have been covered by drawing down on grain stocks, but the carryover stocks – the amount in the bin when the new harvest comes in – have now dropped to 54 days of world consumption, which is the lowest on record.
“From 1990 to 2005, world grain consumption, driven largely by population growth and rising consumption of grain-based animal products, climbed by an average of 21 million tons per year. Then came the explosion in demand for grain used in US ethanol distilleries, which jumped from 54 million tons in 2006 to 81 million tons in 2007. This 27 million ton jump more than doubled the annual growth in world demand for grain.” The world bank reports that for each 1 percent rise in food prices, caloric intake among the poor drops 0.5 percent. Millions of those living on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder, people who are barely hanging on now, will lose their grip and begin to fall off. Accordingly, the World Food Program (WFP), which is a program of the UN, reports that 18,000 children are dying each day from hunger and related illnesses. The UN also observes that of 178 countries on the planet, Sierra Leone ranks number 178 in terms of livability and economy. Rising food prices also have the capacity to be translated into social unrest. As economic stresses translate into political stresses, the number of failing states, including many of those in Africa, could begin to increase even faster. The crop fuels program that currently satisfies scarcely 3 percent of US fuel consumption needs, is simply not worth the human suffering and political chaos that it is causing.

Rice Patty in Sierra Leone

Why Rice?

Rice is a staple commodity of the people of Sierra Leone. In a recent health survey that was conducted in-country, one of the observations made is that people typically reported only eating once a day. It is possible for folks to take in calories during strolls in the jungle, from available fruit that is there; however, the primary source of protein for Sierra Leoneans is rice. The amino acid available in rice provides the building blocks for protein development that is necessary for combating disease.

In October of 2008, a small team from the US visited the Reiku community of Sierra Leone to investigate the feasibility of developing a rice initiative. We were amazed at the vast expanse of property that is available for agriculture. There are large tracts of land that had been developed in Sierra Leone from the colonial period that lie fallow and unused for the most part, since the war.

Village kids playing a game

The climate is perfectly suited for growing rice. The seasons in Sierra Leone consist of a rainy season and dry season. The rainy season commences on or about January of the year and continues through July and August. The rain occurs in significant abundance to enable rice paddies to be sustained in the traditional flooding mechanism, without having to irrigate.

Tools currently used to grow rice

How will a Tractor help?

For the most part, Sierra Leone has the resources that it needs to grow food and to sustain its own population. It has an abundance of arable land suitable for agriculture. It has growers that are open to new farming methods, as evidenced by the research that is currently being done in-country with row crop farming and the conversion of marsh lands for rice production.

Rice Farmer

There is also an abundance of cheap labor with employment rates hovering around 80 percent. The government has assumed responsibility for much of the distribution of the rice crop and presently imports about 60 percent of the total demand needed by the country. With the increased price of rice on the global market, the profitability for sustaining a rice growing initiative in Sierra Leone is excellent.

Kids hamming it up for the camara

What Sierra Leone does not have is capital for investment in equipment. During our visit in October, we observed that the tools that are used to open land suitable for planting and to till it, are all hand tools. The government does provide access to older farm machinery that has not been well maintained and breaks down frequently. There are also a limited number of hours that each farmer can have access to the tractors because of the need for sharing the equipment. Most of the farmers that we talked to said that their entire allotment of time for access to government tractors is spent trying to get them running.

Would You Like to Help?

The cost of acquiring and shipping a tractor to Sierra Leone, West Africa is roughly $30,000. Once we are able to get this tractor paid for, it is our hope to send another tractor, and another one after that. We will continue to send tractors to the country in so far as it is economically sustainable. We have made the provisions necessary to secure the tractor through customs and are confident that we will have good success. If you would like to contribute to this important initiative, any contribution of any size would be greatly appreciated. Please click here to access our donation page.