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.

Meanwhile, the Minister and his entourage moved to the five- hectares Banana and Plantain suckers’ multiplication farm still in Barombi Kang where he was briefed on the functioning of the farm which is a brainchild of the Memorandum of Understanding signed earlier this year between MINADER and IRAD for the production of high quality and disease free plantain plantlets. The seven hectares of varied species of plantain suckers are expected to produce more than 10,000 plantains by April next year.   

Essimi Menye promised two tractors for the Kumba Community Development and Specialization School that has 220 trainees. His visit ended with a working session with the management of the Institute of Agricultural Research (IRAD) in Ekona to evaluate the execution of the terms of the MoU.