00:00Rice farmer Nyanya Jala still can't quite believe it so she does a simple test and sure enough
00:07the Gambia river water tastes salty the village of Choya in Gambia's central river region sits
00:27some 200 kilometers up river from the Atlantic yet even here the fields closest to the river are
00:34turning salty climate change is one course rising seas push salt water further up the Gambia river
00:44while weaker rainy seasons let it reach even further floating the fields with salt so harvests
00:51are shrinking a problem now spreading to rice growing communities all along the Gambia river
00:57most of the land right now is all infested with salt the salt water is coming in and it's coming
01:05in rapidly you know the yields are reduced sometimes the rice will go up to near maturity stage and then
01:11everything just collapse the Gambia is one of the world's most rice dependent nations in 2023 rice
01:20supply reach over 300 kilograms per person ahead of Myanmar Cambodia in Bangladesh and Guinea-Bissau at almost 240
01:34yet the West African nation is increasingly unable to feed itself
01:39in 2024 the Gambia produce only around 52,500 tons of rice while importing almost five times as much around
01:49245,000 tons
01:54the government wants to slash that dependence and reach rice self-sufficiency by 2030
02:02but rising salinity threatens that goal a government and world bank assessment estimates salt water has
02:09already cost more than 10,000 tons of rice since 2009 experts say that it could endanger up to 30
02:18percent
02:18of Gambia's current rice farming land in the next decade
02:25in Troy and all the parts of the country dikes sluice gates and canals are being developed to keep salt
02:32water out while storing valuable rain water on agricultural land
02:39in the community of Batendeng Kajara in the west coast region however farmers are still waiting for these
02:46defences to be built
03:08these systems are central to the national rice strategy which aims to bring climate resilient rice
03:15farming to an area equivalent to roughly 19 percent of the Gambia's total land area by 2030
03:22covering about 10 square kilometers jahalipacha is the largest rice growing area in the country
03:28here the challenge is not only to make up for losses elsewhere but also to increase productivity
03:35dramatically if the country wants to reach its ambitious production targets
03:39in one spot rice is still trash by hand nearby a combined harvester cuts
03:46trashes and cleans it in one go mechanization is desperately needed as it can boost rice production
03:55on land that remains fertile we need to mechanize right down from production to to post harvest or even
04:02to to the market all should be mechanized we cannot keep relying on on on you know simple farm tools
04:09and so on we need we need tractors to tell the land you know we need power tillers but mechanization
04:15cannot
04:16stop salt water from destroying fields elsewhere here is where science can make a difference
04:22the Gambian agricultural scientist Ibrahim Anjai is looking for ways affected farmers can keep growing rice
04:30he is testing to see which of Gambia's rice varieties best tolerate the salt when we do that it is
04:38going
04:38to have an impact on government policies in the sense that they will be able to probably rely on this
04:44information to know that okay the most sensitive varieties must not be supplied to regions that have
04:50high salinity and then the the most sensitive varieties will be supplied to regions that are high in salt
04:57with support from the african development bank the Gambia is currently investing 40 million u.s
05:04dollars in its rice sector but government estimates suggest reaching its national targets could require
05:12nearly 330 million for farmers like nyanya however the immediate need is much simpler
05:20foreign
05:37you
