The visibility and monitoring tour started on Thursday, 21 April 2022 mainly on the Building Resilience against Food and Nutrition in the Sahel Project (P2RS) intervention sites in the West Coast Region (WCR), Lower River Region (LRR), and Central River Region (CRR).
Ousman Sanyang, representative of Marou Farm Ltd., described the timing of the procurement of those equipment as timely and important.
“These equipment are procured through various projects at the Ministry of Agriculture of which the Rice Value Chain Transformation Project brought about 360, P2RS bought 600 while the ROOTS Project, on the other hand, bought about 400 bird scaring guns which sums up to one thousand (1000) bird-scaring guns” he revealed.
He added that the importance of those equipment cannot be overemphasised as it drives away not only birds but hippos and monkeys that intrude the rice fields thus affecting the high production of rice.
These guns do not kill the birds, he narrated, while adding that they are only meant to scare them away and can cover up to five hectares in the rice field.
“The time the farmers used to consume in staying in the rice field to drive away birds, hippos and monkeys can go up to a month but with this new development, they can carry about their other activities while the equipment drives away the birds from the rice field,” he stated.
Mr. Sanyang further explained that the bird-scaring guns are operated using gas bottles and they can be set on a timer from the interval of two to fifteen minutes.
According to him, the bird-scaring guns are harmless and the only issue that could be of threat is its sound and that is what actually drives the birds and hippos away.
“This is affordable to farmers because they only need to fill the gas bottle for D250 after using it for a long period on their farms,” he claimed.
He concluded by urging the farmers to make proper use of the equipment since they are expensive and if properly utilized, can make their job on the farm easier.
