There are two Congos\nin Africa, a big one (pop. 87 million) and a smaller one (pop. 6 million). This visit was to the small one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Smallholder\nagriculture in Congo Republic is heavily based on the cultivation of\ncassava. Very little cereals crops are\nproduced, although several very large-scale farmers are now experimenting with\nrice and maize production, the latter mostly destined for the poultry feed\nmarket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Smallholder farmers\nalso produce, and consume, a broad range of legume crops, including common\nbeans, Bambara groundnut, groundnut, cowpea, and soybean. But there is literally no organized\nproduction of commercial seed of these crops, or any other, so farmers must\ndepend on recycled seed of mostly land race varieties to produce their harvest,\nand their yields suffer tremendously. There\nis no certified agronomic seed available anywhere in Congo, outside of a few\nagro-dealers who import hybrid maize seed from Vietnam and South Africa and\nsell it at very high ($10 per kg) prices. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We were welcomed into\nCongo Republic by Dr. Armand Mvila, Director General of the National Institute\nfor Agronomic Research (IRA), a highly dedicated, informed leader of an\ninstitute which, in spite of being responsible for all crops research and\nrelease of varieties in the country, is stretched to its operational limits by\na lack of funding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, Congo\nRepublic\u2019s cassava crop is heavily affected by high incidences of mosaic virus\nand brown streak virus, and needs to be renewed through an intensive testing,\nselection, and multiplication of new varieties available from IITA or any\nnumber of national agricultural research institutes in the region which have\ndeveloped new, virus-resistant varieties, including Nigeria, Ghana, Malawi,\nTanzania, and Mozambique.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The IRA team at\nLoudima, led by Lambert Moundzeo and Fridolin Moutsouran, inspired us with\ntheir dedication to crop R&D, inspite of the very limited resources at\ntheir disposal. I left Congo Republic\nwith a sense that a relatively small amount of funding could produce a lot of\nimpact in the lives of some of the continent\u2019s most marginalized farmers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are two Congos in Africa, a big one (pop. 87 million) and a smaller one (pop. 6 million). This visit was to the small one. Smallholder agriculture in Congo Republic is heavily based on the cultivation of cassava. Very little cereals crops are produced, although several very large-scale farmers are now experimenting with rice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2273,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1722"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}