SW Youth Enjoined to Embrace Large-Scale Agricultural Production

To shape the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC) towards gaining more markets and making more money, Essimi Menye, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development (MINADER) visited the corporation's banana extension project in Ndongo near Tiko on October 4. He also held a working session with top CDC staff at their headquarters in Bota.

The Minister was received during his trip by the local administrative authorities led by Okalia Bilai Bernard, Governor of the South West Region, and Franklin Njie, Acting General Manager of the CDC who detailed out the functioning of the corporation to the august visitor. Although the Minister visited only the banana farm and factory, the CDC agro-industrial enterprise corporation, created in 1947, grows three commercial tropical crops namely oil palms (14,070 hectares), rubber (19,758 hectares) and banana (3,559 hectares), employing some 22.000 workforce.

The Minister's presence offered another opening for the CDC management to voice the corporation's latest setbacks. Such include crop theft even by armed bandits, ageing farms resulting in production drop, insufficient irrigation of banana farms due to inconsistent power supply, lone European ultra selective and critical market, urbanisation occasioning drastic shift of plantations, and administrative bottlenecks in MINADER affecting timely importation of farm in-puts. It was disheartening to officials to learn that there has been a drop in Tiko Del Monte Bananas production from an initial 50 tons per hectare to 30.

It was, however, explained that not only was the farm ageing but that Del Monte whose contract with the CDC will expire in 2013 had dictated the non-replanting of more bananas as their management changed hands and they claimed unable to buy more bananas causing a freeze in regeneration. In answer to the hurdles of CDC, the Minister prescribed a change of habit for Cameroonians to consume what they produce to circumvent dictatorial markets abroad. He said it was high time companies and individuals think and act business to improve output. The Minister announced a vast plan to engage thousands of youth in large-scale agriculture whereby the CDC's role will be to buy more than growing produce. He explained that this new approach would save the CDC from investing a lot in fighting crop theft.