Sierra Leone farmers return to dig fields, not gems

By Katrina Manson

KOIDU, Sierra Leone (Reuters) - The battle for Sierra Leone's eastern diamond fields fuelled its 11-year civil war, but now the muddy pits are being returned to farming under a scheme funded by U.S. luxury jewelers Tiffany & Co.

As normal life broke down at the start of the 1991-2002 war, farmers tore up their crops around the eastern town of Koidu in the hope of finding precious stones. People dug up their gardens, the roads, even the floors of their homes.

Many residents, who fled as the army and Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels clashed for control of the diamond pits, returned to find a ravaged landscape dotted with craters.

Food supplies are scarce in a lush region once touted as the potential bread-basket of the poor West African country.

"Up until now there has been no land reclamation at all and we are running out of land," Daniel Gbondo, local representative of U.S. charity the Foundation for Environmental Security and Sustainability (FESS), told Reuters on Thursday.

As a first step, communities in three pilot projects have set about reclaiming 45 acres, growing staples such as rice and maize, plus vegetables like aubergine and okra. The first rice season yielded a good harvest, and improved seed varieties will be sold to local farmers, Gbondo said.

"The bumper crop is particularly important for the community because they have never seen land reclamation and really think there is no use for the land after mining," Gbondo said.

Stagnant water which collects in the pits is a breeding ground for mosquitoes which transmit malaria, while children have fallen into the steep craters and drowned.

DIAMONDS BRING MISERY

Sahr Bockarie is among 150 workers, many of them former diamond miners, paid to reclaim mined-out land as part of the $200,000 project funded by Tiffany's charity arm.

The 27-year-old spent 12 years bent double searching for diamonds in the vast cauldrons of mud up to 15-metres deep.

"It was very strainful: I find small, small diamond only," said Bockarie, spade in hand, for whom a fortnightly wage has made all the difference. "This work is better because at the end of the day, I have hope. Before I no get hope."

The former British colony has been famed for its diamonds since their discovery in the 1930s but decades of mining has failed to benefit its 6 million people. Youth unemployment runs at 75 percent and child mortality is amongst the world's highest.

President Ernest Bai Koroma, elected last year, has promised to shift the economic focus from mining to agriculture, evoking an era when the lush country exported rice instead of relying on Asian imports for its staple food.

Artisanal miners produced most of the $147 million in diamonds exported last year, often via rich Lebanese businessmen who still control the trade. But their task is growing harder as surface diamonds disappear and industrial miners move in.