1. Rice Policy Challenges and
Constraints for Liberia:
Food Security for Small-holders and
rice value chain development
Eric Wailes, Professor
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Division of Agriculture

2. Overview of presentation
• Two economies of the Liberian rice sector
• Constraints and Challenges
• National Rice Development Strategy
• The Path Forward – institution
building, infrastructure development and valuechain enhancements.

3. Two Rice Economies of Liberia
60% dependence on imports
Development and rehabilitation
of the domestic rice sector
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4. Liberia Rice Production, Supply, Use and Trade
2006/07 2007/08 2008/09 2009/1012010/11 2011/12 2012/13
130
Thousand Hectares
160
190
200
200
200
200
0.78
Metric tons/ha (milled)
0.71 0.95 0.93 0.94
0.95
0.96
Production
Beginning Stocks
Domestic Supply
101
0
101
Thousand metric tons (milled)
113
181
185
187
189
0
0
0
0
0
113
181
185
187
189
191
0
191
Consumption
Ending Stocks
Domestic Use
311
0
311
253
0
253
331
0
331
385
0
385
402
0
402
409
0
409
426
16
443
-210
68%
-140
55%
-150
45%
-200
52%
-215
53%
-220
54%
-251
59%
Area Harvested
Yield
Net Trade
Import Share
Source: USDA, PS&D
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5. Key Constraints and Challenges
Value Chain
Constraints
Institutional
Constraints
Infrastructure
Constraints
Lack of Certified Seed Production
System
Limited adaptive research capacity
at CARI
Inadequate feeder road network
Limited credit and microfinance
Lack of Extension and Training
Programs
Damaged and Undeveloped
Irrigation Systems
Limited private sector for input
marketing and rice milling and
marketing
Inadequate information on farmlevel constraints, costs and
productivity
Lack of farm
machinery, drying/storage, milling
facilities

6. National Rice Development Strategy
Liberia Agriculture Sector
Investment Program (LASIP)
Food and
Nutrition
Security
Competitive
Value Chains
and Market
Linkages
Institutional
Development
Land and
Water
Development
Liberia National Rice Development Strategy (LNRDS)
Enhancing
Access to
Inputs
Mechanization
Enhancing
Post-Harvest
Quality
Improvement
Enhancing
Access to
Markets
Institutional
Capacity
Building
Land and
Water
Development

7. Vision and Scope of LNRDS
Ecosystem
Upland
Yield/ha
Lowland
Rain-fed
Yield/ha
Lowland
Irrigated
Yield/ha
Area
2018
cultivated projection
2009 (Ha)
(Ha)
Production output (MT)
2009
2018
1-crop/yr
2018
1.5 crop/yr
190,000
190,000
171,000
0.9 t/ha
380,000
2 t/ha
380,000
20,000
64,500
24,000
225,750
338,625
1.2 t/ha
3.5 t/ha
4,000
273,000
2.0 t/ha
6 t/ha
2,000
45,500
409,500
Total
212,000
300,000
199,000
878,750
1,128,125
Source: Ministry of Agriculture. 2011. National Rice Development Strategy. Table 2, p. 18.

8. Path Forward: Research and Extension Policy
on Upland and Lowland Rice Systems
1.
2.
3.
Farmer Association demonstration sites are developed for 2013 to
provide a much-needed baseline data set on productivity and costs of
production, to evaluate the strategy regarding on-going efforts towards
the two production systems.
Measurement of practices, production and productivity for project
farmers and a control group of non-participating farmers will provide ongoing assessment of progress and constraints critical to analyze future
strategy of rice value chain.
With regard to upland rice value chain:
– What priority should be given to upland rice system improvement?
– What is the extent to which upland rice needs to be understood as an
integrated cropping/livestock system?
– What is the role of rice as a food subsistence component where more
emphasis is needed on diversification into vegetables and livestock as
opportunities to improve household incomes and diets/nutrition?
– How to address this with respect to the global context, the environmental
context, food security context and small-holder engagement.

9. Path Forward: Research and Extension Policy
on Upland and Lowland Rice Systems
4.
With regard to lowland rice value chain:
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
5.
What priority should be given to lowland rice system improvement?
What are the economic returns to investment in development/ rehabilitation of
lowland rice areas? Can it be justified on rice alone?
What is the extent to which lowland rice needs to be understood as an integrated
cropping/aquaculture system?
What is the role of lowland rice from a food security framework as a safeguard from
dependence on rice imports and volatility in global rice markets?
How to address this with respect to the global context, the environmental
context, food security context and small-holder engagement.
Post-harvest processing and marketing:
4.
5.
6.
The strategy to work with Farmer Associations to develop post-harvest processing
infrastructure has begun using a parboil approach.
This is value-enhancing from both a milled rice recovery perspective and a nutrition
enhancing perspective.
Basic questions remain on logistics and coordination of inputs
(fuel, water, labor, drying and storage of paddy, drying and storage of parboiled, and
drying and storage of milled (brown or white rice) and use of by-products (hulls, bran
and ash).

10. Recommendations
1. Develop business incubation models for Farmer
Associations for value chain investments.
2. Develop cost-benefit analysis of improved seed
and associated technology packages being
promoted by MOA and FED/USAID.
3. Develop detailed study using AGREP models on
impacts of pending trade negotiations with
ECOWAS and WTO for Liberia rice to assess
accession, staging and consequences for the rice
sector.

11. Global Rice Framework – Arkansas Global
Rice Economics Program (AGREP)
Arkansas Global Rice Model AGRM is one of the two global rice modeling
frameworks maintained by the University of Arkansas’ Global Rice
Economics Program (AGREP). AGRM is a partial, non-spatial, multi-country
statistical simulation and econometric analytical framework.
RICEFLOW, is a spatial equilibrium framework that tracks bilateral trade flows
and rice value chain adjustments for flexible product disaggregation of rice
and other commodities and disaggregation of countries and regions.
These models are updated on a regular basis to provide situation and outlook
projections and are being used to provide analyses for the World
Bank, IRRI, USDA, OECD, Asian Development Bank, United NationsFAO, Africa Rice Center as well as many national governments and
research institutes. These models link all countries through rice prices and
trade (Wailes, 2012).
African countries and regions currently modeled include: Cameroon, Cote
D’Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria,
Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, ECOWAS-7, and Rest-of
Africa
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