Liberia Agricultural and Environmental Journalists Network (LAEJN) Promote informed journalism and public engagement on agricultural and environmental nalists Network (LAEJN)
By: Joseph Titus Yekeryan
DOMAH-PA, NIMBA COUNTY- 36-year-old Yei Dahn stoops to lift a basket of cabbage slick with dew, balances it on her head, and starts walking. The path out of her farm is a ribbon of laterite and mud that feeds into an even rougher feeder road. A motorbike, if she can find one, will cost almost as much as she hopes to earn before prices dip at the market in Gompa city.
“The cabbage can grow well here,” she says, “but carrying it to the market is the hardest part. The money I spend on transport sometimes leaves me with almost nothing.”
Across various farms and villages behind Domah-pa, farmers like Dhan cultivate rice, cabbage, peppers, bitter balls and greens with tools their grandparents would recognize. Most work by hand, intercropping and composting to stretch thin inputs. Extension support is sporadic; mechanization is rare. What drains their earnings most, they say, isn’t the soil, it’s the road.
According to Germany Trade and Investment 2023 report, Liberia has roughly 13,019 kilometers of roads; only about 5.6 percent is paved, leaving the vast majority of rural and feeder links unpaved and highly vulnerable to rain. In the wet season, sections become impassable, isolating communities, pushing up transport fares, and forcing farmers to carry produce on foot or gamble on motorbikes.
Even paved corridors are fragile. Under a World Bank road-asset program, the share of the (classified) paved network in good or fair condition improved from about 1 percent to 34.5 percent of 746 km — progress, but over a small slice of the national grid and dependent on steady maintenance funding.
For farmers in Nimba, these numbers translate into hard choices. “If I pay the bike boy two trips,” says Peter N. Quoi a 41-year-old man who sells peppers and greens, “the profit can finish before I reach the market.” Local reporting from the county has documented farmers rerouting produce across the border to Côte d’Ivoire when domestic road links collapse
Women here shoulder farm work alongside childcare and trading, with less access to cash or credit. Miss a day for a sick child and the crop waits, but the market does not. The rainy season magnifies those pressures; roads wash out, trips stretch by hours, and perishable crops spoil. Liberia annual country report has flagged the seasonal impassability of many Liberian routes for years, a pattern rural families still live with.
Experts say the story of the farmers illustrates a larger issue in Liberia’s agricultural sector. While government and international partners focus on boosting production, little attention is paid to the hidden costs, transportation, market access, and land availability which drain farmers’ profits.
“We plant with cutlasses and hoes,” says Menzee Domah, a rice farmer in his 50s. “We are ready to work. But the roads are stronger than us.”
Despite the hardship, there is quiet pride in the farmers’ words. They know that their work sustains towns and families across the region. Their hope is that with the right support, improved transport, affordable loans, and access to better farming tools, their sweat will one day yield more than just survival.
As the sun sets over Domah-pa, Yei Dahn walks home with the basket and tired legs. Tomorrow, she will return to her cabbage field, determined to try again.
