MINADER Announces Industrial Maize, Plantain Production

By Roland MBONTE, Cameroon Tribune, 27-11-2013

Minister Essimi Menye used his working visit to the South West to announce the creation of excellence centers for some major crops like cocoa.

The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development (MINADER), Essimi Menye, has said the production of some major crops like plantains, maize, banana will soon go industrial in the country. He was speaking in Barombi Kang-Kumba in the South West Region while on a working visit to some high-yielding seed multiplication farms on Monday 25 November 2013. 

The MINADER boss visited the five-hectare CMS 8507 and a corn specie farm in Lysoka, in the outskirt of Buea before moving to the Community Development Specialization Training School in Kumba and the Cocoa and Coffee Seedling project as well as the IRAD Plantains Suckers multiplication plots in Barombi Kang.

Minister Essimi Menye used the visit to announce the creation of special excellence centre for some crops like cocoa, plantains and other priority crops so as to boost the know-how of farmers on modern techniques of mass production. These centres would enhance farmers’ skills, thus improving productivity as enunciated in the second generation agriculture policy.

He said government spends so much money to import rice which to him can be substituted with plantains if production is increased. The industrial production of plantains, he added, would be of enormous advantage as plantain flour can be used for bakery products and chips. While in the maize seed multiplication farm in Lysoka, Minister Essimi Menye asserted that production will be increased next year as the centre expects to produce more than 60 tons of high yielding maize seeds to be distributed to farmers by April 2014 free of charge.

At the Cocoa and Coffee Seedling Project in Barombi Kang, Minister Menye was impressed with the grafting technique of high yielding cocoa seeds propagation. He was led through a guided tour of the centres application farm where he saw with delight the 15-month old cocoa trees already producing cocoa pods.>>>