Top Newspaper Names Farmer Assisted by Feed the Future Liberia FED Project as its Person of the Year

January 12, 2016

A former businessman who took up farming to help Liberia become more self-sufficient at generating food was named Person of the Year by the Daily Observer, one of the country's top newspapers.

John Selma is part of a group that harvested 1 million tons of rice in Lofa County in 2015. Under Selma's leadership, the group took advantage of technical assistance and farm lending facilitated by a U.S. Agency for International Development initiative-the Feed the Future Liberia Food and Enterprise Development Program (FED).

Selma, 43, quit school in fifth grade when his father, a successful surveyor, was killed during Liberia's civil war. Inspired by his father's community mindedness but deprived by Liberia's instability, Selma got along by engaging in small businesses-including making small loans to farmers-until he took up farming himself.

"Late 2012, I realized that I needed to get back to the soil to grow more food after noticing that the issue of food is the country's major problem," Selma told the Monrovia-based Daily Observer. "I decided to start my farming activities with a village savings loan for only farmers in the county, while at the same time encouraging [local farmers] to go back to the soil with high expectations of earning a better living for them and their families." In selecting Selma above other candidates, the newspaper wrote:

"We had been through the usual suspects … for 2015, we felt the need for significant focus on agriculture. But who were the major players? Who was that entrepreneurial farmer, someone who was solutions-oriented, a leader among his peers producing a volume of crop that inspired other farmers to compete?

"[John Selma] had to be our guy-in fact, our group-for what we saw on the ground in Lofa was an example that one need not be a wealthy businessman or politician to produce the kind of volume we are reporting about. It was an example of the possibilities that derive from good leadership, trust, unity-and, for goodness sake, hard work."

Launched in 2012, FED assists farmers and farm communities to grow crops more successfully, supports agriculture coursework at Liberian universities, and encourages pro-farmer policies, among other activities.

To read the entire Daily Observer article, click here.