The Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (MAFS), through the Planning, Evaluation, Monitoring and Statistics Division (PEMSD), is set to commence the 2025 Crop Production Survey for the rice value chain across Sierra Leone. This follows the successful completion of the crop listing presurvey conducted from 27 October to early November 2025.
To guide the process, MAFS has established a Technical Working Group (TWG) for the 2025 Crop Production Survey. The TWG provides oversight for the design and implementation of the survey, ensuring methodological rigor, quality assurance, and timely, policy-relevant outputs.
During its second convening, the TWG finalized several key decisions, including validation of the sampling strategy, definition of explicit strata across the five rice ecologies, and endorsement of the crop-cutting methodologies. The TWG also approved the questionnaire that will be used for the rice crop-cutting survey.
The crop-cutting exercise will generate nationally representative, high-quality data—including geo-referenced yield measurements, district-level production estimates, and validated field information. These outputs will directly support annual production estimates, strengthen routine crop monitoring, and enhance alignment with international reporting standards.
Fieldwork for the crop-cutting survey is scheduled to begin on 26th November 2025 and conclude in January 2026, with technical and coordination support from the Agricultural Transformation Office–Sierra Leone (ATO-SL). The ATO’s assistance is made possible through funding from the African Agricultural Transformation Initiative (AATI).
This survey marks another significant step in strengthening Sierra Leone’s agricultural data systems and advancing evidence-based planning under the Feed Salone agenda.
