Small farms in West Africa: a descriptive analysis of employment, incomes and productivity in Sierra Leone.

Abstract

The survey indicated differences among farmers within resource regions in traditional enterprise combinations. The most important resource currently used in Sierra Leone agriculture is family labour. The demand for labour is seasonal. Employment of labour in non-farm activities appears to be somewhat less than observed in other areas of rural Africa. The analysis of rural wages indicates that wage rates are responsive to supply and demand conditions in the rural labour market. When all inputs except labour were costed at 1974/1975 prices and returns to labour computed it was found that most farming systems have a low return to labour although in most cases this return was quite comparable with the wage rate for that area. Two rice farming systems, one using improved biological and the other mechanical technologies, were analyzed in detail. -from WAERSA