Quality imperative in improving agriculture yields

If ongoing concerted efforts between government and development partners were anything to go by, then Cameroon will by 2019 witness significant evolutions in some food crops very much produced today in subsistence manner with low productivity and mainly for home consumption.

In effect, maize, cassava and sorghum are expected to be grown in larger scales. This is thanks to a five-year Agricultural Investment and Market-driven Project (AIMDP) officially launched in Yaounde on Wednesday January 28, 2015 by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

It sets out to develop these three chains and make them competitive by tripling productivity per hectare, with high-yielding seeds. Stakeholders say the project consists in organising farmers into cooperatives through which they can make direct contracts with agro-businesses that are buying the additional production.

Granted, this means production will improve significantly especially as the agro-businesses have already indicated what quantity of what produce they will need and when. Records show that agro-businesses in the country have indicated their readiness to buy locally about 200,000 metric tons of maize, 1.4 million metric tons of cassava; about 30,000 metric tons of flour and starch as well as 30,000 metric tons of sorghum. This is good indeed given that these industries have the produce as their indispensable raw materials but have been spending huge sums of money on imports, for want of sufficient local production.

That over 120,000 people will be affected by the project coupled with the fact that disease-resistant and high-yielding seeds scheme will be developed to allow for others to tap from the project to improve on the farm inputs speaks of how much quantity of the different crops could be produced.

Certainly enough quantity to meet household and industrial use! This as well opens the produce to exports which could greatly improve the livelihoods of the farmers.

Here, improving on quality is imperative. This implies respecting national and international norms so that what is produced could be readily accepted anyway across the globe. For success, project controllers must put the standards in place now and unconditionally clamour for their respect by all and sundry. Quantity is good to invade the market but the quality will conquer competitive prices needed to keep the farmer alive and his/her economy buoyant.