Cameroon steps up aquaculture

The low production of rice in Cameroon has been attributed to a number of factors, namely; poor soils, the absence of high improving variety, lack of interest by farmers to go into rice production, as well as financial constraints.

Only 25 percent of the total rice demanded in the country is produced locally, while 75 percent is imported. These statistics were made known during a workshop organised by West and Central Africa Council for Agriculture Research and Development, WECARD and University of Buea, UB, Integrated Culture Projects: Fish and Rice cum Poultry on January 17 at UB, under the theme: “Sustainable integrated pond-based aquaculture with rice and poultry production.”

The forum was attended by different stakeholders who shared ideas on how to improve fishery, rice, poultry and piggery production.

Divine Ewane, an Animal Scientist at UB, said the integration of fish, rice and poultry production is an economic initiative whereby a piece of land is being used to achieve several goals.“You use the same piece of land to achieve the production of fish, rice, and poultry.

Secondly, you can use this to achieve organic objectives. For example, the fish picks out the insects from the rice farm, thus, preventing you from using pesticides, and the pig dung is used to produce what the fish feed on,” Ewane stated.

During the workshop, fish farmers were advised not to dump waste directly into their ponds because it doesn’t only affect the fish, but it is also dangerous to public health.

The fish-cum-rice-cum poultry production faces some challenges, such as; the presence of predators, like birds and snakes that feed on fingerlings rendering the pond almost void of fish.

This explains why fish farming has not been very popular among Cameroonian farmers ever since it was introduced. But, as a remedy, nets have been introduced to get rid of these prowlers.

Prof. Fritz Oben, an Agronomist and Land Resources Management Expert at the University of Dschang fielded questions from The Post on the issues at stake: What is the innovation platform all about?

An innovation platform is a forum where you bring more stakeholders from different backgrounds to share ideas on how to improve a specific production activity.

They share ideas through discussions. But we have carried out experiment in most parts of the country to ensure that this project can be a success. We are already doing demonstration in the field.

The fish farmers, in particular, have had some problems before and, right now, we have a research farm in Yoke and another in Teke where we are testing this process. We also have an adaptive research farm in UB. Along the two research farms, we are going to train 200 fish farmers; 100 in Yoke and the other in Teke.

What’s the potential of Cameroon meeting up with its rice and other cereal demands?

The potential is really high, in the sense that we have new varieties in the country which have been tested. We are trying to identify rice production sites and we are also trying to train rice producers to use the technology and the available expert information to boost production.

We have both lowland and upland rice production systems. We have also the support from the International Research Consortia directed to increase rice production in Cameroon.

In the Central Region, for example, we have some upland rice being produced. In the Northern Regions, we have rice production which has been the major rice producing belt in the country. In other inland valleys like Wum, Bafut, Menchum and Sancho, things are changing and moving towards revitalising rice production business and, I think we are in the right direction with the expert knowledge available to improve on our rice production in the country. From the look of things, most farmers are not going into rice production. What are you doing to encourage them?

The number of farmers engaged in rice production is not as high as we would have loved it to be, but we think that, if the business is made more profitable, we will find a good number of them going into it. However, we have a good number of constraints; finance –first of all to develop their pieces of land is expensive.

Secondly, they need money to buy fertilisers and pesticides. So, if these things are provided, I think most farmers will go into rice production.

In the University, we are trying to train some students to specialise in rice production. You know, for now, we are doing a good number of things on the average like visiting farmers and organising training workshops.

Presently in the University of Dschang, we have a centre of excellence on Integrated Soil Fertility Management and some other organisations are going to partner with us on this. This is just the first step.

What’s the benefit of these projects to the Cameroonian society?

All of this is about putting food on the table. Rice is a common menu in most households, fish is required to boost our protein intake, and if we can put these basic things on the tables of many families, we would have gone a long way to be food sovereignty, producing locally, reducing imports which drain a lot of our foreign exchange.