Eritrea: Promising Harvest Owing To Hard work and Good Rainy Season

Contrary to media reports based on opinions, Eritrea is experiencing a good harvest season

Aligidir: Promising Harvest Owing To Hard work and Good Rainy Season


By Kesete Ghebrehiwet,

Owing to nature’s benevolence farmers have been engaged in ploughing, leveling, sowing, and different farming activities. The very promising rainy season of 2014 has enabled a number of farmers to extensively engage in their farmlands with an intensified expectation of good harvest. Farmers in Aligidir area have therefore been excessively busy in reaping and threshing of different sorts of agricultural yields. If it is very common to see a number of tractors ploughing vast farm area, it is also not surprising to see harvester machines making moves in Aligidir so as to garner as much agricultural produce. All the activities and the movements of agricultural vehicles are mainly directed towards harvesting the fruits of hard work on the part of Eritrean farmers.

Farmers have continued to do what they could relying in seasonal rainfall. There is no doubt that the availability of rain is the very reason for any sort of development. Thus the impact of a great amount of water that has been impounded in the already constructed different sized water reservoirs would be highly instrumental in boosting agricultural yields of the country.

One could see a number of farmers from Aligidir and from Teseney have not only been harvesting cereal crops of different types, but they have also opened employment opportunities to a number of people in from the environs of the agricultural area.

Inhabitants of Teseney Mr. Hamid Ahmed Ali and Mr. Abdela Hamid Mahmud have been jointly working in a farm land of eight hectares in Aligidir. These two farmers have been engaged in cultivating sorghum and they were very busy threshing their agricultural produce using a harvesting machine.

As regards the goody rain season of 2014 and what their expectation is, Mr. Hamid Mahmud Ali said “we have been annually engaged in farming activities and we believe the most demanding task is ultimately the highly compensated. Praise to the Almighty God! The seasonal rain was really sufficient enough. We are expecting to harvest up to and beyond our expectation.”

There was indeed good amount of seasonal rain in 2014. Nature’s benevolence coupled with hard work of farmers in leveling and making diversion lines and most importantly timely distribution Government and private tractors, Mr. Hamid said that they have not witnessed any sort of delay as regards provision of agricultural machines. What is more is that the Ministry of Agriculture has been assisting them in disseminating timely information about pests that could pose threat to the agricultural yields as well as in the distribution of pesticides in due time.

But, Mr. Hamid expressed his dismay about the prices of ploughing service they continued to pay for private owned tractors and hence the called up on concerned bodies to increase the number of Government tractors so as to enable every farmer to have due service at a fair price.

Mr. Abdela on his part said “Praise to the Lord!! As this year’s rainfall has been evenly distributed and to the extent of sufficient amount, everybody is very thankful. We are enjoying good work atmosphere where everybody earns his daily bread. Like Mr. Hamid, Mr. Abdela is highly concerned about the threshing machines. Most of the harvesting machines we are using are private owned ones. There exists a vivid deficit of Government harvesting machines. There is also a huge price difference. While we pay Nakfa 1250 per hour to the Government tractors we are forced to pay Nakfa 200 per one quintal to the private machines. The Government tractors are capable of harvesting redoubled quintals within the set timeline. Thus, instead of paying Nakfa 4000 to the private tractors we could spare some money.

The agricultural activities that have been carried out in Aligidir have awakened different work areas. A number of youth have been engaged in reaping activities, different trucks have been giving freight services and garages have been giving maintenance services to agricultural as well as loading vehicles. Different shops have been busy in selling different items, a number of people have been gathering animal feed for their livestock. What one could understand from the vibrant agricultural activities of Aligidir is that, the more the agriculture is developed the more the work opportunities are increased.

Rahel Abrham is among the youth who have been engaged in reaping activities. She is 8th grader. She said “This is my first time to work in agriculture. As soon as I heard that there is good work atmosphere in this area, I come to make use of the spare time after school.”

Ms. Tsgereda Bokretsion is a mother of two children. She said “I found working here is very rewarding when compared to other work areas. So far, I have worked for 10 days and I would stay here as long as the harvesting time comes to an end. “

Likewise, Mr. Babakir Mussa Omar is a father of two children. He used to be engaged in small scale gardening activities. But, he said that since he found working at Aligidir is more profitable than his former work, he has chosen to be in the farm area to earn a price of his hard work.

Mr. Eyob Berhane is another farmer who has been working in eight hectares of farm land. He said “It is not only due to good amount of rain that we have been able to harvest good amount of agricultural produce. This has become a reality owing to the relentless efforts that we continued to exert.”

One could conclude that if agricultural activities are by far developed another areas of work would also be awakened. There would be good employment opportunity and service providers would also get benefited of the opportunity that would be opened owing to a booming agricultural activity.

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