When Thierno Agne was a student casting about for a lucrative career, he told his agriculture professor he was considering growing strawberries in Senegal.
“You will fail,” he remembered the professor warning.
He didn’t listen, and now, at 36, Mr. Agne runs one of the biggest strawberry farms in the country.
He had not even wanted to be a farmer. He had started his higher education by studying law. But then, he shocked his family by switching to agriculture when he realized there were already more law graduates in Senegal than there were jobs available.
Still, despite the glut of legal graduates, his shift in focus was an unusual move for an ambitious young man in a country where farming is seen as a job for old, uneducated or poor people.
Mr. Agne has shown, however, that farming can be a profession that requires education, commands as much respect and remuneration as a lawyer, and demands as much innovation as any high-tech entrepreneur is expected to show.
On a recent morning at his farm just outside Dakar, the capital, Mr. Agne quietly trod the rows of vibrant strawberry plants, checking how his delicate crop was doing.
This crop would be sold in Dakar supermarkets and by roadside vendors — part of Mr. Agne’s mission to turn what was recently a luxury treat into an everyday fruit.
“We want to demystify the idea that strawberries are not for Africans,” Mr. Agne said on his farm. “That they can be grown here, sold here, and locals, especially our kids, should enjoy them.”
His mission just got harder. Until recently, he received support from the U.S. Agency for International Development to hire seasonal staff and train people to expand strawberry production in Senegal. That assistance was terminated in February as part of the Trump administration’s gutting of the aid agency.
But students are still coming to the farm in Bayakh, a village in the Thiès region.
Strawberries are the favorite fruit of Rama Diane, 16, a student from Dakar who recently visited one of Mr. Agne’s farms. But she hadn’t eaten one in a whole year. Standing on the edge of a field full of them, she and her classmates were eager for a taste. Ms. Diane popped one in her mouth and immediately started making comparisons to the one she had last year.
“It wasn’t as sweet,” she said of last year’s berry. “I guess it was imported.”
The unique taste of his locally grown strawberries is a point of pride for Mr. Agne. He is hoping to ultimately end strawberry imports, which currently account for about 80 percent of Senegal’s consumption. But he is also determined to demonstrate that farming can be a source of good jobs in a country where they’re acutely scarce — 20 percent of young people are unemployed in Senegal.
Farming can also keep young people at home, he said, instead of pouring out of the country by the thousands every year, often risking dangerous routes for opportunities in Europe and the United States.
U.S.A.I.D. had been helping with goals like these.
In Senegal, where the agency spent $27 million last year, the dismantling of such support will make young people feel hopeless and will fuel illegal migration, according to Mr. Agne.
Several young people he mentored had been considering migrating to the United States through a circuitous route via Nicaragua, but he managed to change their minds. A big part of his pitch was the success that he had managed to find in Senegal — and that he had a valid American visa but was too busy and satisfied at home to want to cross the Atlantic with it.
Mr. Agne grew up outdoors and around agriculture, tending — and often singing to — his father’s mango trees. But he never thought his future would be in fruit production.
“It was fun,” he said, smiling as he reminisced about his emotional bond with his father’s banana and mango plants.
But he saw his career path far from the fields of his hometown, Tambacounda. He wanted to be a lawyer and follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, a respected imam and colonial-era Muslim jurist.
After completing his secondary-level education, he hopped a train to Dakar, which he knew of only by the tales of its beauty, vibrant life and allure of opportunities.
“It was my first time ever leaving Tambacounda,” he said. “I got lost, and I didn’t have enough money.”
A few days later, Mr. Agne showed up at Cheikh Anta Diop University and enrolled in a law program.
But when one of his professors told him that more than 2,000 recent graduates from the law school still did not have jobs, he was bitterly disappointed.
Dejected, he went back to his hometown, worrying about his prospects. But on that trip home, he learned for the first time that his beloved grandfather had been not only a jurist, but also a major farmer who supplied millet and corn to French forces during World War II, earning medals and French citizenship.
Upon returning to Dakar, he abandoned his law program and signed up to study agriculture.
The decision divided his family. “Some thought I was mad,” he said.
On a recent morning, Mr. Agne welcomed over 60 students from a Senegalese school, and as he explained the science he had applied to grow strawberries against the odds, the biology teacher who brought the students started nodding along.
The teacher, Alieu Bah, said his students picture farming as something the poor do. “I want them to change that perception,” he said.
It was harvest season, and such organized visits to Mr. Agne’s farms were frequent.
With the earth softened by recent watering, the delighted students ran wild through the fields, picking ripe strawberries.
“I am so, so excited to be here,” Rama said, adding that it was her first visit to a farm, and even more thrilling, it was a strawberry farm.
Before Mr. Agne started FraiSen — the name of his company, which is short for Fraise Sénégalaise, or Senegalese Strawberry — the berry’s production on a commercial scale was unheard-of in Senegal. The West African country’s hot and humid climate and erratic rains were simply not suitable for it, many thought.
Mr. Agne himself was 22 when he first saw strawberries, on a school exchange in France.
Until then, the main crop he had seen was peanuts, Senegal’s primary export crop, and millet, a grain grown for local consumption.
So what drove him to embrace such an unexpected crop?
“It’s sexy,” he said, as he moved in between rows of the berry on his sun-drenched farm. “It’s different.”
He began his experiment by planting a few strawberries on his balcony in Dakar, and they thrived. He then rented a 2,150-square-foot plot for $250 to begin commercial operations. He earned nearly $6,000 with his first crop in 2015.
His second year, after scaling up to a little over 5,000 square feet, he profited around $13,000. That gave him the confidence to expand further, to 2.5 acres. But then his plants spoiled midway through the growing season.
“I guess I was overambitious,” he admitted. “Now, I take things step by step.”
Eight years after that hard lesson, Mr. Agne now cultivates a total of 12 acres on three fields, producing 50 tons of strawberries annually. His plan is to acquire a 50-acre field next year, which would put him into a small circle of large-scale agricultural producers in Senegal, where 95 percent of farms are small, mostly subsistence holdings.
He has trained hundreds of young people over the years, some of whom have become strawberry farmers, and others who process the strawberries into juice.
“There are now 50 of us,” he said, referring to an association of strawberry farmers he created. “Together, we produce 180 tons every year.”
With this homegrown production, strawberries are now cheaper in Senegal’s groceries and even sold by hawkers on the streets. But at $9 to $11 per kilogram (a little over two pounds), they’re still unaffordable for many.
As the visiting students left, each holding a box of strawberries, Mr. Agne inspected his plants, which miraculously survived the stomping.
“I am proud of what I have achieved,” he said. “I have put my country on the map of strawberry producers.”
Saikou Jammeh is a reporter and researcher for The Times based in Dakar, Senegal.
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