Catalyzing Long-lasting Growth for Food Security and Nutrition in Liberia

The Feed the Future Food Security, Nutrition, and Resilience activity in Liberia is helping smallholder farming communities, especially women and youth, take the lead in their country’s agricultural development.

Liberia's Path to Economic Growth and Agricultural Development

Liberia is an ethnically diverse country in West Africa with an ambitious plan to revitalize its economy, lift people out of poverty, and reach middle-income country status by 2030. Lingering effects of two civil wars, Ebola outbreaks, and the COVID-19 pandemic have left Liberia short of achieving widespread development goals, including in the agriculture sector—a sector that more than 60% of Liberians rely on for a living.

Improving Liberia’s food and agricultural system would reduce poverty and food insecurity while making more nutritious foods available and affordable in the country. Improvements can also help farmers adapt to climate shocks and adopt low-emission practices that reduce greenhouse gases. 

Feed the Future Liberia Food Security, Nutrition, and Resilience Activity

The Feed the Future Food Security, Nutrition and Resilience (FSNR) activity is a five-year (2023–2028) program helping Liberian farming communities produce, sell, and consume more nutritious, high-value agricultural commodities, such as vegetables, tree crops, poultry, goats, and sheep. The activity’s reach includes Lofa, Nimba, Bong, Margibi, Grand Bassa, and Montserrado counties in Liberia. 

FSNR activities will focus on:

• Increasing production and productivity.
• Enhancing access to finance and markets. 
• Improving nutritional well-being, as well as demand for nutritional crops.
• Strengthening resilience capacity of small holder farmers and cooperatives to contribute towards the broader agriculture led economic growth goal and support the Government of Liberia priorities.

At FSNR’s official launch on June 13, 2023, over 90 participants, including representatives from Ministries of Agriculture, Youth and Sports, Chairs of the Senate and House Committees on Agriculture, international development partners, and local authorities from target counties learned about FSNR’s unique approach, which seeks a shift away from the historic focus on rice and cassava toward nutritious and high value crops. FSNR will make this shift by putting farmers groups at the center of its approach, working with and through informal, nascent, and established cooperatives to build their capacity and resilience to support their members well after FSNR ends.

Increasing Liberian Farmers’ and Cooperatives’ Capacity for Sustainable Results

To ensure lasting progress, FSNR is building the capacity of farmer groups and cooperatives, especially those engaging with women and youth, to build long-term relationships with market actors and provide services to their members, such as access to inputs, finance, and equipment. The activity is also adapting a digital extension platform that farmers and farmer groups can use to access production advice, market information, and an early warning system for shocks, such as pests and disease as well as weather events.

The activity’s Resilience Investment Fund will help these groups diversify production; adopt new, climate-smart technologies, on farm processing and best practices; and improve their operations. In addition, cash grants will further help vulnerable women and youth strengthen and diversify their livelihoods in the face of shocks like climate change.

The FSNR comprises a consortium of partners, led by RTI International, that are adapting their proven methodologies for climate-smart agriculture, market system development, and cooperative extension capacity building to the Liberian context to create greater economic opportunity and resilience. 

Learn more about RTI’s work in food security, agriculture, and nutrition and in Liberia.