The 2025 farming season in Cameroon's North West region has officially been launched. Dubbed the "season of hope and resilience," the launch comes with a strong call for farmers to adopt sustainable agricultural practices.
The launch held at the premises of the North West Development Authority (MIDENO), falls within the framework of the Cameroon Emergency Food Crisis Combat Project - PULCCA. It was characterized by the distribution of farm inputs and equipment targeting 6500 farmers with the aim of ensuring food security, boosting production and productivity of farmers in crops such as cassava, rice, plantain, market gardening and the provision of basic equipment for production and post harvest.
MIDENO's General Manager, Cletus Anye Matoya commended on productivity improvement in the 2024 farming season while stating that a follow up mechanism to ensure proper use of inputs will be shared.
"We work alongside with MINADER in all the 34 sub-divisions of the region. We are using the MINADER staff, the sub-delegates and the chiefs of post. They train the farmers, they supervise and aid them to do the planting. We worked with them last year and the produce stepped up.We are very hopeful that this time around, the production will continue to step up" he said.
On his part, Governor Adolph Lele L'afrique, who doubles as MIDENO's Board Chair, reiterated the government's commitment to food security and economic stability through sustainable agriculture while encouraging farmers to embrace new farming methods and work closely with traditional leaders to foster peace.
"We are expecting the farmers to increase their production and to flood the market with food production to fight against food insecurity in a crisis zone...a lot of improvement has been observed in the security domain. I also seize the opportunity to ask them, when they are going back to their various communities, with their traditional rulers and other stakeholders, not only to work hard, but to contribute in peace building".
Funded by the World Bank, the PULCCA initiative aims to assist vulnerable farmers while training more beneficiaries in climate-resilient farming techniques.
To promote climate smart agriculture and improve soil fertility, MIDENO has emphasized the use of organic fertilizers by ensuring 99% of fertilizers given to farmers are organic fertilizers such as Fertiplus, EM-compost.
Farmers benefiting from this project are expected to make proper use of inputs to improve agricultural productivity, share knowledge with other farmers as well as participate in capacity building workshops and follow up assessments to help assertain impacts.
