United Methodist Rural and Agriculture Development Program (UMRADP)

Revitalizing and commercializing all United Methodist Agricultural infrastructures.

Generally the Liberian Nation lacks food security and a large proportion of its people are poverty stricken and The United Methodist Church in particular is highly depended; most of its pastors and members are underprivileged; although, the Church has access to huge quantities of land resource and Agriculture infrastructures which are currently in ruins. Moreover; the Church’s Agricultural Program which over the years contributed to the enhancement of food security and economic empowerment needs to be restrengthened.

UMRADP, as already stated has two major components: 1) Agriculture infrastructure Revitalization and Commercialization; this component will bring all dormant facilities (i.e. poultry buildings, pig pens, Cattle ranches, bee hives, etc. into commercial production. It will also expand and create additional facilities and all available facilities both new and old will be utilized for commercial production. This is aimed at enhancing the financial sustainability of the Liberia Annual Conference, job creation and poverty reduction. 2) Outreach; this is a strategic Agricultural extension program catering to farming communities and rural congregations through capacity building training for the empowerment of small farmers, rural pastors and parishioners. This intervention will also address the issues of capacity building, self-reliance and sustainability.

The primary goal of the project is to enhance food security, self-reliance and poverty reduction. The project design has two major components and each component is multi-location. The components are: I.LAC/UMC agricultural infrastructure revitalization and agro-enterprise development and II.Rural community agro-economic empowerment. Primarily, the overall objective of component I is to generate substantial income from agro-enterprise development for the sustainability of UMRADP’S outreach strategies and to financially contribute to LAC/UMC operational costs; and the overall objective of component II is to build the capacity of farming communities through intensive trainings, technical services, reorientation and assistance to enhance increased food production, poverty reduction and self-reliance. It focuses on rural farmers, local UMC pastors and congregations.

The number of LAC/UMC agricultural infrastructures rehabilitated and are in operation, the number of agri-enterprises developed and being operated by UMRADP, the number of farmers targeted at community level and the percentages of farmers whose skills are improved and who are impacting agricultural production. Other indicators will be number of training sections held, etc.