Thirty-eight odd years have gone by and 67-year-old Dismat Bershu has been farming on the same piece of land, which he inherited from his parents. The fertility of the soil on Bershu’s farm has also depreciated with every passing moment.
By Azore Opio
As the fertility of the soil in Kumbo farmlands in Jakiri Sub-division, Bui Division, once known locally as Kov-Bohkpu (Forest of Struggle Till Death) and now called Kov-Ngongba) began to wane some years ago, the crop yields also began to drop. The production of maize, beans and Irish potatoes plunged drastically from several bags to just a few.
“I have been farming here for 38 years. When the soil was still new, my yields were high but now the soil is old. I used to harvest 20 to 30 bags of potatoes when the soil was good; now I get sometimes 10 or 13 bags only. Even the potatoes are not as good as they used to be; they rot in the ground,” Bershu told The Green Vision.
“The soil has changed and the potatoes have also changed,” Bershu added.
As for the maize, it produces yet not as well as it used to. Beans too have dropped in yields.
According to Bershu, he used to fill one Land Rover with his harvests, but now at least four farmers have to gather their harvests to fill a Land Rover pick-up truck, perhaps the only vehicle that has remained faithful to the Banso farmer to evacuate his crops.
In order to try to restore the fertility of the soil, Bershu says officials from the Ministry of Agriculture have stopped them from burning their farms.
“The agriculture technicians told us to use grass and the stems of old crops to mulch the soil,” said Bershu.
Poor agricultural practices plus lack of technical know-how, treacherous road infrastructure, population pressure and poverty, have all worked against agricultural production in Banso. These, however, including poor soils and low yields, have not suppressed interest in farming as an occupation in Kumbo. Villagers still trek for two hours and more across deep valleys and up steep hills to their farms and use rudimentary tools to continue producing their staple crops.
People were growing mostly cocoyam and sugar cane, then we switched to maize, beans and Irish potatoes.
Suliy Emma is 61 years old. She lives in Meluf village and farms in Ngongba forest where she met people already farming. She has been working the farm since 1968, trekking there for over two hours on each trip and spending three or more days on the farm. Her harvests of corn, beans, potatoes, she transports on her head.
“At first the land was so fertile but now the fertility has dropped; I really don’t know what has happened. So now we only struggle to use fertilizers and compound manures before we can have a little crop,” said Suliy.
Suliy said it was only three years ago that motorcycles (okada) came to rescue them from digging footpaths and waiting for Land Rovers to evacuate their crops in the dry season.
Although Kumbo is well known for high Irish potato yields, the crop has been hit by a strange disease, which causes it rot in the ground. Experts from the Ministry of Agriculture have been trying to help stem the ‘rotting disease’ by grouping the farmers so that they may easily receive technical advice and equipment.
Forty-five-year old Mariamu Shinyuy said minus the fertilisers and pesticides, which they receive from government as a group, they would not harvest any reasonable amount of crop.
“It has been hard on us farmers but we cannot stop farming,” Mariamu said.
Mariamu said they have been managing their farms with some inputs from the Ministry of Agriculture such as fertilizers and pesticides, otherwise they would not harvest anything from their farms.
The 1st Deputy Mayor of Kumbo Council, Mrs. Lukong Margaret Beri, admitted that farmers now have poor yields due to soil fertility that has greatly degraded.
“There are some farms that have been worked for more than 30, 40 to 50 years and they need to renew the farms. And to renew the farms they need manure and at times artificial fertilizers which of course, are very expensive, not to talk of our local manure from fowl droppings, goat and cow dung which used to be cheap but now the prices have gone up and the farmers are unable to buy the manures,” said the Deputy Mayor.
She added that those who even manage to harvest a little crop are faced with low prices in the markets. A 20-litre bucket of potatoes sells for 2.000 francs cfa in the market while a bag of fertilizer goes for 19.000 francs cfa. How many buckets of potatoes can a farmer sell to afford a bag of fertilizer besides paying school fees, paying hospital bills and so on?” the Deputy Mayor asked.
On top of the low yields is the perennial farmer-grazier problem, one of the factors impoverishing Kumbo farmers. So, the Deputy Mayor appeals to government to subsidise farm inputs so that farmers can improve their yields.
It is in the face of these hardships that the farmers in Kumbo wish that Trees for the Future would come to their rescue, having heard of the success stories of the US charity organisation in improving farmers’ livelihoods.
Trees for the Future has improved the lives of farmers through agro-forestry and reforestation notably in Mendakwe and Bafut in the North West, and Lebialem, Fako and Meme Divisions in the South West Region.
