Sierra Leone – Sustainability News – 3

Topic of the Week

Food Security

Food Security means that all people at all times have physical & economic access to adequate amounts of nutritious, safe, and culturally appropriate foods, which are produced in an environmentally sustainable and socially just manner, and that people are able to make informed decisions about their food choices.

Food Security also means that the people who produce our food are able to earn a decent, living wage growing, catching, producing, processing, transporting, retailing, and serving food.

Food Security, therefore, is a universal concern: it affects everyone and it touches many public policy areas.

At the core of food security is access to healthy food and optimal nutrition for all. Food access is closely linked to food supply, so food security is dependent on a healthy and sustainable food system.

The food system includes the production, processing, distribution, marketing, acquisition, and consumption of food.

Environmental Health – ensures that food production and procurement do not compromise the land, air, or water now or for future generations.

Economic Vitality – ensures that the people who are producing our food are able to earn a decent living wage doing so. This ensures that producers can continue to produce our food.

Human Health & Social Equity – ensures that particular importance is placed on community development and the health of the community, making sure that healthy foods are available economically and physically to the community and that people are able to access these foods in a dignified manner.

Food Security in Sierra Leone

As we learned from the early days of the Ebola crisis the food chain in Sierra Leone is, in part, strongly influenced by the ‘East’ of the country. When that became ‘sealed-off’ the cost of basic food stuffs in Freetown and other cities and towns began to increase.

In 2010 there was a ‘spike’ in the prices of basic food stuffs and energy prices that caused 100 million people to slip into ‘poverty’. For many people that content of their next meal is NOT known.

Agriculture remains an ‘unfashionable’ occupation and we have to focus our minds on how to:

  • Make farming an attractive occupation
  • Increase farming incomes
  • Reduce the ‘risk’ element of farming
  • Improve the incomes of women working in farming
  • Reduce the continued rural-urban drift.

One way in which we can all help address the above is by asking relatives what was grown when they were younger and why it no longer is? This will show us what new seeds, plants etc. could be re-introduced.

We need to think of solar energy, animal waste energy, human waste energy, the retention of water levels (now more erratic as climate change affects seasonal patterns) and ways of preparing land that does not involve ‘slash and burn’. We must use land to bury carbon and crop in ways that complement the food and cash products grown.

Relevant You Tube films:

Some sites to visit:



Best Wishes,

John