Mbasmasgra takes lead in second generation agriculture

With a production capacity of over 240 tons of maize seedlings per year and several tons of cassava, members of the Mbangtang Song Maize Seed and Grain Agricultural Society Limited (MBASMASGRA), have affirmed their commitment to champion the much talked about second generation agriculture in Cameroon.

The over 1,000 farmers drawn from Koke, Kumbu, Mouelli, Muyenge, Muyenge Trouble and Kartakata were speaking through their President, Stephen Song, on December 16, during an inspection visit of the Southwest and Littoral Regional Coordinator of Agricultural Investment for Market Project, AIMP, Samuel Yen, to their farming area.

The Agricultural Investment for Market Project, better known by its French acronym PIDMA (Projet d'Investissement de Marche Agricole ) is a programme under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, aimed at boosting maize, cassava and sorghum production in Cameroon.

The project is also intended to empower farmers and communities through various cooperative societies that can help Cameroon feed over 1,000 new mouths and 500 families per annum.

The President of MBASMASGRA said he was not surprised that his cooperative was among the eight other cooperatives selected in the Littoral and Southwest agricultural zones to benefit from the AIMP assistance.

To Song, the youthful labour force and the availability of fertile land spanning over 130 hectares can enable them increase their yields.

He boasted of over 10 hectares of land containing a variety of cassava such as 80/34, 92/36, 96/44 among others.

Despite these factors, the President of the cooperative lamented that they are a plethora of problems rocking the activities of the cooperation such as lack of farm-to-market roads.

This perennial problem, according to Song, has been the greatest deterrent to the activities of the cooperative society, because, farm produce at times deteriorate because they cannot be easily evacuated to the market.
He pointed out an incident last year where several tons of maize rot on the farm because they could not easily be transported.

Other problems he highlighted include inadequate equipment, Government delays in payment, the destruction of crops by elephants, non-respect of conventions signed between MINADER and partners. Such conventions, he argued, are done by words of mouth and are not tenable in banks, and so on.

MBASMASGRA Vision 2020

After the complete elaboration of the business plan with AIMP, the President of MBASMASGRA said by 2020, his organisation should be capable of planting, transforming, packaging, and selling their produce directly from the farm.
Song prayed that their new partnership with AIMP would yield the much-expected results of bringing the cooperative and the consumers of their products such as Guinness, Nestle and others together.

Meanwhile, after visiting the over 130 hectares of land, the Coordinator of AIMP, Yen, expressed satisfaction with the large expanse of fertile land and a young labour force which, he said, were good for the future of agriculture in Cameroon.

According to him, after assessing the potentials of MBASMASGRA and the difficulties plaguing the cooperative, certain amendments would be made in the business plan of the organisation.

Yen asserted that the urgent need is to create farm-to-market roads since AIMP will be giving out seedlings to members of the cooperative in March 2015 to enable them increase production.

In 2017, he said, all efforts would be geared towards building and installing the processing unit, which would be used to transform the farm produce into finished goods.