**Table 14: Rice Yields with Improve Practice**

|**Ecosystem**|**Traditional Practice**<br>**t/ha**|**Improved Practice**<br>**t/ha**|**% Change**|
|---|---|---|---|
|Uplands|0.8|1.4|75.0|
|IVS|1.7|2.3|35.3|
|Boliland|1.5|2.0|33.3|
|Mangrove Swamp|2.8|4.0|42.9|

Source: Baggie I., Lamin A.S., Lahai M.T. Inland Valley Research and Development, Sierra Leone The model is used to simulate the result of an experiment, which assumes that rice yields across the four ecologies covered in the trials increase to levels indicated for improved practice. Since the trials did not cover the Riverain ecology the yield from this ecosystem was held at the current level (2016 survey baseline) for the simulations. The results of the simulation are shown in Table 15. Producers clearly benefit as domestic production of rice rises by 40 percent from the 2016 survey baseline to 974,833.7 tons. Consumers also benefit as the price of rice would fall from US$768.64/ton to US$594/ton, a reduction of 23 percent. This benefit to both consumers and producers is reflected in the fact that the Consumer/Producer surplus would increase from US$1,328.3 million to US$1,486.0 million.

The simulation also suggests that the increased yields relative to baseline is both land and labor augmenting as the entire Upland and a substantial part of the Boliland ecologies would be unutilized and the total employment in the rice sector would fall from 669,340 in the baseline to 377,600. Furthermore, with this technical progress the value of domestic production of rice would rise by 86 percent to US$726.25 million, thereby providing a substantial boost to the domestic economy.

Simulating the impact of the technical progress of increased yields under the various tariff assumptions suggest that with the increased yields, a tariff level of 5 percent would eliminate imports and that tariffs above this level would bring no benefits. This reflects the fact that the increased yields from technical progress would result in the increase in production to fully satisfy domestic demand and hence there would be no demand for imports. This finding has implications for the government’s short and medium strategic policy focus. While increasing the tariff in the short term may be beneficial, over the medium term the focus should be on raising productivity in the rice sector. This is likely to have a much larger impact on boosting consumer/producer surplus, through simultaneously lowering price to consumers and raising the income of producers.

**Table 15: Results of Technical Simulation**

|**Tariff level (%)**|**0**|**1**|**5**|**10**|**15**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Key policy indicators||||||
|**20. CPS (US$ Mn)**|1,486.0|1,462.8|1,462.8|1,462.8|1,462.8|
|**21. Employment (No.)**|377,600|792,770|792,770|792,770|792,770|
|**22. Production (Mt)**|974,833.7|1,509,816.0|1,509,816.0|1,509,816.0|1,509,816.0|
|**23. Exports (Mt)**|512,430.0|512,430.0|512,430.0|512,430.0|512,430.0|
|**24. Imports (Mt)**|550,710.0|115,736.8|-|-|-|
|**25. Trade balance (Mn$)**|(156.40)|207.02|207.02|207.02|207.02|
|**26. Fiscal Revenues ($)**|-|154,300|-|-|-|
|**27. Price ($/Mt)**|594.20|635.03|635.0|635.0|635.0|
|**28. Price increase (%)**||6.9|0.0|0.0|0.0|

Source: Model Simulation 25