Cocoa, Coffee Treatment Launched

Minister Essimi Menye on June 12, 2014, handed over fungicides and spraying equipment worth FCFA 177 million to South West farmers.

The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development (MINADER), Essimi Menye, has launched the total treatment and regeneration of cocoa and coffee farms abandoned or aging in the production basin of Cameroon.

The Minister kicked off the exercise last 12 June in Kumba, capital of Meme Division, which is a leading area in cocoa and other foodstuff production. Minister Essimi Menye personally demonstrated a fungicide spraying session and planted high-yield cocoa specie at the Barombi Kang research centre to encourage farm extensions.

Accompanied by Clement Fon Ndikum, Secretary General in the South West Governor's Office and Forwang Lawrence, Regional Delegate of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Minister moved to the SOWEFCU premises in Kumba where he handed over fungicides, spraying and farm equipment worth FCFA 177 million to farmers' cooperatives in the South West Region.

He addressed words of encouragement to farmers from the six Divisions of the Region among whom 7,850 have already benefitted from farm management training. They were urged to join or form genuine cooperatives to intensify food and cash crop production. The Minister said government by this subsidy intends to rejuvenate aging farms and farmers, propel yields, fight fake agro-chemical products in the market and wrestle such pests as cocoa black pot and coffee leaf rust which had dropped production by 30-40 per cent according to expert estimates.

The exercise is equally a booster to lure youth into large-scale agriculture in gradual replacement of their aging parents in the sector averaging beyond 60 years.

Essimi Menye announced the training of cooperative executives and staff in the days ahead to render more efficient the ideals of the second-generation agriculture started in 2012 as a sure way of protecting citizens' livelihoods and ensuring the exportation of foodstuff like maize and cassava by 2020.

To support the endeavour, Ndedi Bau Akama-Makia, South West branch President of the platform of Agrosylvo Pastoral and Fisheries Professional Organisations of Cameroon (PLANOPAC), called for a new legal framework for cooperatives that are bound today to replace Common Initiative Groups in Cameroon.

Sources say cocoa and coffee were introduced in Cameroon by 1892 from South America. Of recent, Cameroon could boast of 200,000 tons of cocoa export yearly. With the new vent to revive crops, Cameroon envisages to hit the export of 600,000 tons of cocoa yearly neck-and-neck with Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Nigeria, and Indonesia.