Liberia’s untapped potential: What the new agriculture census and survey reveal

For decades, Liberia’s agricultural sector has been recognized as central to the country’s economy, rural livelihoods, and food security. Yet policymakers and development partners have often had to make critical decisions with limited and outdated data. That is now beginning to change.

Liberia’s new Agriculture Census 2022/23 and the 2024 Annual Agriculture Survey provide the most comprehensive picture of country’s agricultural sector in more than fifty years. Together, they reveal a sector with enormous untapped agricultural and agribusiness potential, but one still constrained by low productivity, limited commercialization, and weak access to modern inputs and markets.

The findings point to both an urgent challenge and a major opportunity: how can Liberia transform a predominantly subsistence-based agricultural system into a more productive, market-oriented, and resilient agribusiness sector?

Agriculture remains the backbone of Liberia’s economy

Agriculture continues to play a major role in Liberia’s economy and society. The 2024 survey estimates that more than 68% of Liberia’s population is engaged in agriculture, while the sector contributes roughly 28.5% of GDP, making it Liberia’s second-largest economic sector after Services.

The census identified approximately 338,630 agricultural households and an agricultural population exceeding one million people. Nearly all agricultural households are engaged in crop cultivation, underscoring the sector’s central role in employment, food production, and rural welfare.

Agriculture is particularly concentrated in Liberia’s North Central region, which accounts for half of all agricultural holdings nationwide and contains country’s largest cultivated land area. This concentration highlights the region’s importance as Liberia’s agricultural heartland and a potentially strategic zone for future agricultural investments and agribusiness development.

Large land resources, but significant underutilization

One of the clearest findings from the survey is the scale of Liberia’s underutilized agricultural potential.

Liberia’s agricultural holdings collectively cover about 1.49 million hectares of land, yet only around 896,000 hectares were planted during the reference agricultural season. This suggests that substantial areas of agricultural land remain either fallow or underutilized, reflecting both opportunities for expansion and the structural constraints limiting productive use.

Agriculture remains overwhelmingly smallholder-based. The national average holding size is approximately 4.4 hectares, although there are significant regional differences. Most households operate one or two parcels using traditional farming methods and family labor.

Rice and cassava dominate Liberia’s farming systems. Rice production reached more than 201,000 metric tons in 2024, reinforcing its role as Liberia’s principal staple crop. Cassava is cultivated widely across the country, though productivity remains relatively low.

These findings suggest considerable room for productivity gains through improved seeds, irrigation, mechanization, and better extension services.

Liberia’s agriculture remains low-input and rain-fed

Despite the sector’s importance, the new data reveal how limited the adoption of modern agricultural technologies remains.

The overwhelming majority of farmers continue to rely on manual tools and rain-fed production systems. Nearly 80% of plots are cultivated using traditional hand tools, while mechanized land preparation accounts for less than 1% of farming practices nationwide.

Input use is also strikingly low. Only about 7% of farmers report using inorganic fertilizer, while more than 70% still depend on uncertified or recycled seeds. Irrigation is almost nonexistent, used on just 1.6% of agricultural parcels. The survey additionally notes that crop disease and animal damage are among the most commonly reported agricultural challenges across farming communities.

This means that much of Liberia’s agriculture still relies on traditional, low-input methods, making production less productive and far more vulnerable to erratic rainfall and climate shocks.

Beyond farming: The untapped agribusiness opportunity

While crop production dominates the sector, the reports also point to significant opportunities beyond traditional farming.

Poultry, livestock, fisheries, forestry products, and agro-processing remain relatively underdeveloped but potentially important sources of income diversification and rural employment. Poultry production, for example, is more widespread than livestock rearing, particularly in some regions.

The forestry and charcoal economy also stands out as an important rural income source. The survey estimates that charcoal sales generated approximately LRD 5 billion (around 27 million USD equivalent) nationally, with strong activity concentrated in the North-Western and South-Central regions. While this reflects growing market demand and commercialization, it also raises important sustainability concerns regarding forest management and environmental degradation.

The reports further highlight strong opportunities to expand food processing and storage, strengthen agricultural logistics, improve seed and input supply systems, upgrade rural transport and market infrastructure, and promote value-added agribusiness activities linked to growing domestic food demand.

Together, these areas represent important entry points for building stronger agricultural value chains, markets, finance, and processing opportunities, and creating more jobs both on and off the farm.

Women play a central role but continue to face structural disadvantages

The census and survey also reveal the important but constrained role of women in Liberia’s agriculture sector.

Women are heavily involved in agricultural labor, particularly in planting and weeding activities, while men dominate land preparation and fencing. Yet women continue to face disadvantages in land ownership, education, and access to productive resources.

Only about 14.5% of women in agricultural households possess ownership or secure rights over agricultural land, compared to roughly 19% of men. Female-headed households also exhibit significantly higher rates of illiteracy than male-headed households.

Closing these gender gaps could significantly enhance agricultural productivity, strengthen household welfare, and improve food security outcomes.

Limited access to finance continues to constrain transformation

Perhaps one of the most striking findings is how few agricultural households receive external support.

According to the 2024 survey, access to external support remains very limited. Only 1.8% of agricultural holdings received subsidies, 11.5% accessed loans, and just 4.7% benefited from agricultural transfers. These figures suggest that the vast majority of smallholders continue to rely primarily on personal savings, informal borrowing, and family labor to sustain production.

Without greater access to finance, extension services, storage facilities, and market infrastructure, Liberia’s agricultural transformation is likely to remain slow and uneven.

A new agricultural data era creates new opportunities

Beyond the findings themselves, the agriculture census and survey represent an important institutional milestone for Liberia.

The 2022/23 Agriculture Census was Liberia’s first agriculture census since 1971 and the country’s first digitally conducted agricultural census. Supported through World Bank’s regional statistics operation, Harmonizing and Improving Statistics in West Africa (HISWA), and the 50x2030 Initiative, it created a modern sampling frame that can support the regular production of nationally representative agricultural statistics.

This shift toward evidence-based agricultural policymaking comes at a critical moment as Liberia seeks to advance its ARREST Agenda for Inclusive Development (AAID 2025-2029), where agriculture is expected to play a central role in economic transformation, employment creation, and poverty reduction.

The data now clearly show that Liberia possesses many of the core ingredients needed for agricultural and agribusiness transformation, including abundant land resources, a large agricultural workforce, strong domestic food demand, and expanding rural market activity. In other words, the country is not starting from scratch. The fundamentals are already in place, and with the right investments and policy support, they could provide the foundation for a more productive, commercialized, and resilient agricultural economy.

The challenge now is turning that potential into inclusive and sustainable growth.