As seawater creeps in, Gambian farmers rethink how they protect rice fields
Rising seawater is forcing Gambian rice farmers to abandon fields and rethink decades-old dike-building traditions along the Bintang Bolong estuary.
For years, villagers in Kiang Jifarong, Gambia have built earthen dikes each season to keep seawater out of rice fields along the Bintang Bolong estuary. It hasn't been enough: paddies that once stretched unbroken for five kilometers now show patches of salt damage, and many farmers have retreated further inland over the past decade as saltwater turns rice leaves yellow and leaves grains hollow and unusable.
Some farmers have given up entirely — two described by Mongabay abandoned their fields eight years ago after repeated failed harvests, and families in the area increasingly buy imported rice instead. Nearby communities are also clearing more forest to open new farmland further from the coast.
Some villages have turned to permanent concrete dikes, built with UN Development Programme funding, but a sustainable-development specialist quoted by Mongabay warns these can backfire by blocking the natural tidal flow that would otherwise flush out salt — sometimes making the problem worse. He points to "gated dikes," used elsewhere in the region, that let tidal water pass through in a more controlled way as a possible alternative, alongside salt-tolerant rice varieties now being distributed to farmers.
Based on reporting by Yero S. Bah for Mongabay. Read the original: https://news.mongabay.com/2026/09/as-saltwater-advances-gambian-farmers-rethink-how-to-protect-rice-fields/
This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by an editor before publication.
