In collaboration with a development-oriented international non-governmental organization CARE, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) is successfully introducing a suite of disease-tolerant planting materials to over 40 village communities in the East and Adamawa Provinces of Cameroon. Issues related to these planting materials and accompanying management practices were subjects and objects of three field days organized across villages of this collaborative project between 31 August and 15 October.

The field day brought together over 350 curious farmers from the pilot and neighboring villages across the project sites that span the forest-savanna agroecological region of Cameroon. Apart from assessing introduced agricultural technologies, the field days also provided opportunities for discussing overall project progress, sharing experiences and developing action agendas for subsequent cropping seasons. Each of the field days started with brief opening ceremonies presided over by local administrative officials during which D. Michael Boboh Vabi, IITA Team Leader on the project explained IITA’s mandate on the project and presented the implementation approach and highlights of concrete achievements and challenges of the first cropping season and first year of implementation. While welcoming participants to the events, local administrative officials welcomed the idea of a field day and project initiative and other activities of IITA within their respective administrative units
of command. This was followed by visits to demonstration plots where participating farmers appraised four disease-resistant varieties of cassava (92/0326 and 96/1414 from IITA, and 1415 and 2425 from IRAD-Agricultural Research Institute for Development, Cameroon), four maize varieties (CMS 8704, CMS 8501, Shaba, and BSR 81), six improved varieties of banana-plantain, and a number of improved legumes varieties including soybean (SJ299), cowpea and groundnuts (A26).

The field plots were set up to demonstrate similarities and differences between improved and local crop varieties, assess yields under farmer conditions and introduce legumes into the cassava-based farming system characteristic of the Cameroon forest-savanna.

The project also contributes IITA’s international varietal screening trials of 12 cowpea and 19 soybeans varieties. Three elite varieties of each of these crops emerged from trials established during the 2005 cropping season and have been replicated in 2006.

Following the visits to demonstration plots, participants worked in groups (cassava, maize, legumes, and/or plantain-banana) to document their appreciation and observation. In each of the groups, farmers identified the aspects they most appreciated in the improved as compared to local crop varieties and made suggestions for consolidation, and adjustments. Key aspects of farmer appreciation of introduced crop varieties included: greener leaves, cleaner stems and reduced weeding for cassava, larger cob/grain sizes, planting densities and early maturity for maize compared to the local varieties, and admiration for the performance of introduced legumes (including Irish potatoes as a high value crop in the Adamawa Province).

While recognizing the effect of chemical fertilizer on the performance of maize variety CMS 8704, concerns were raised about the timely availability fertilizer, its cost and difficulties of accessing credit services. Overall, participating farmers of the field days were pre-occupied with reliable input supply systems that could help them produce and sell more food crops in order to take their socio-economic development into the distant future.

In addition to IITA’s technical team, the Cameroon ministry of agriculture and rural development (MINADER) was represented during all the field days by both senior officials and frontline staff, who together with the IITA team, answered questions and cleared doubts raised by participating farmers during visits to demonstration plots and discussion sessions. Traditional authorities of all the pilot and neighboring villages were also present during the field days.

At the end of each field day, representatives of MINADER lauded IITA’s initiatives and expressed their satisfaction with the progress of interventions. Farmers expressed their gratitude and enthusiasm to IITA for facilitating their access to improved planting materials and the accompanying management practices.

Funds for the project are provided by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) within the framework of the 1985 Food for Progress Act. Apart from being a tool for contributing to the alleviation of abject rural poverty by addressing constraints of the farming systems in the forest-savannah region of Cameroon, joining CARE to implement this project provides an opportunity to IITA to take forward cooperation agreements signed with the national agricultural research system (NARS) in Cameroon particularly IRAD – Institute of Agricultural Research for Development, MINADER and the University of Ngaoundere in the Adamawa Province of Cameroon.

Dr David Chikoye, Leader of IITA Savannah Programs is responsible for overall coordination while a Cameroonian socio-economist, Dr Michael Boboh VABI is leading the IITA field team comprising of a systems agronomist, three animators/field technicians and three support staff.

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