CMR to boost palm-oil production by 26% in 3 years

Cameroon, Africa’s third-biggest palm-oil producer, plans to start using higher-yielding seeds to help raise production by 26 percent over the next three years, Agriculture Minister Essimi Menye said.

The new seeds will be planted over an additional 30,000 hectares (74,141 acres) of land and are expected to boost production to 290,000 metric tonnes a year, compared with 230,000 tonnes produced now, he said in an interview on Monday in the capital, Yaounde.

About “10,000 additional hectares of plantations will be planted each year,” he said. The seeds will be produced by the Institute of Agricultural Research for Development and distributed for free to farmers, Menye said. Cameroon’s demand for palm oil, used in products from noodles to biofuels, is estimated at 325,000 tonnes.

The central African nation presently has 160,000 hectares of palm-oil plantations. Africa’s biggest producers of palm oil are Nigeria and Ivory Coast, according to the website of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.