ABSTRACT
The civil war in Sierra Leone between 1991 and 2001 had a devastating effect on agriculture. The fighting, which involved the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels, government forces and local civil militias, forced many farmers to flee their villages. 1 They returned home, often years later, to find their tools stolen or broken and their seed stocks looted. Fields that had lain fallow for a decade required intensive labour – typically provided by young men – to clear. This labour was generally unavailable as many youths who resided as displaced persons in urban areas during the war remained to pursue employment and education opportunities. Unable to clear the seasonally flooded boli land, most farmers engaged instead in small-scale production of secondary crops. For farming villages located in proximity to disarmament centres, funding for large-scale production of staples was only available if civilian farmers agreed to form cooperatives with ex-combatants. Ex-combatants – mainly the demobilized fighters of the RUF – were a primary ‘target beneficiary group’ of post-war aid projects because of the prevalent fear that an unhappy ex-combatant would return to living by the gun (see Utas 2005). Thus, unlike civilian non-combatants, they had ready access to agricultural aid.
