For many years, Mariam Leigh struggled to eke out a living as a smallholder farmer reliant on rain-fed farming in Pachang, a small community located south of the riverbank in the Central River Region of The Gambia. Increasingly long periods of low rainfall or drought followed by intense rains and flood, made it difficult for her to grow enough crops to make ends meet from farming alone. But that all changed when she joined a Gambian start-up building a network of local producers working collectively to increase availability of Gambian’s staple food – rice.

Maruo Farms is a local Small and Medium sized Enterprises supported through the Jobs Skills and Finance for Women and Youth in the Gambia, or JSF Programme. 'Maruo' means 'local farm' and true to its name, Maruo Farms use climate smart and sustainable rice value chains to build climate resilience at the local level.

“Maruo uses the process of hiring small scale farmers, such as myself, to cultivate and harvest rice,” said Ms Leigh. “We are paid staff with the condition of harvesting a certain amount [of rice] per month. In my team of 24 women, I am team-lead, responsible for guiding them [through the] harvest and process.”

Agriculture makes up a significant proportion of The Gambia's economy, comprising 25% of its GDP, according to government figures.

The government estimates that about 75% of workers in The Gambia are employed within the agricultural sector, mainly as smallholder farmers. Climate change is making it ever more difficult for smallholder farmers to produce enough food to sustain themselves and their families. Many, including Ms Leigh, have at times had to seek other work to supplement their farming activities.

Young Gambians in particular are leaving rural communities altogether and looking for opportunities in the growing urban areas or across borders, even braving dangerous irregular migrations routes to Europe.

By joining the Maruo Farms collective, Ms Leigh has received training in climate-smart agricultural practices and techniques that optimize production and output, even amid increasing climate stresses. The training prepares farmers to successfully manage and cope with the impacts of climate change while preventing those impacts from growing worse. She also has access to machinery, storage, fertilizers that were previously beyond her means.

And, as team-lead of a rice cultivation group, Ms Leigh has been assisting others, strengthening diversification and sustainable livelihood strategies that reduce the impacts of climate change in the agriculture and livestock sectors of The Gambia.

“Prior to joining Maruo, I didn’t have equipment to plough rice or plant seedlings or buy fertilizer. This made it very hard to sustain my small farm. With increased use of water-smart solutions and rice processing centres, Maruo Farms has equipped small farmers like myself, to better deal with the realities of a warmer world,” said Ms Leigh, who uses the income she generates from the JSF Programme's cash for work activities to put money in her savings for future opportunities.

Another component of the support from the JSF Programme includes the construction of two storage facilities to support a planned scale-up of operations from 50 hectares to 600 hectares of cultivated farmland over the next five years. This goes hand-in-hand with supporting the network of independent growers, like Ms Leigh, who together cultivate an additional 3,000 hectares of rice. As of July 2022, 1,680 smallholder farmers work with Maruo Farms, 90% of whom are women.

Through promotion of climate smart practices that use drought resistant rice strains, Maruo Farms has created market opportunities and income generating activities for rural farmers. Working as a collective that shares best practice, know-how and resources has improved the farmers’ adaptive capacity and resilience to climate change while promoting gender equality.

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