Soy Group

Many of the farmers in my village plant soy. They were trained by IRAD, the Institute pour la Recherch Agriculture et Development, to plant it in efforts to fight the loss of soil fertility, perhaps to get farmers off the cotton cycle as well. The women were "trained" on how to make soy milk and tofu, although I'm not sure how well because they don't actually make it now. Maybe they didn't like it too well, or maybe it's too much work, or maybe they were only briefly trained and have forgotten. But they do add soy flour to regular flour to make "bouille" the traditional flour and water hot drink thats often drunk for breakfast. As it is, the farmers were trained to grow soy, were given improved seeds by IRAD and started to grow soy. But they didn't know what to do with it, because there wasn't a big market for it. Through other volunteers, I heard of a GIC (common interest group) in Mokolo in the Extreme North who works with farmers in various villages, trains them on growing soy, sells them the seeds, and then buys the harvest which they then transport to Douala and sell to CamLait, a Cameroonian company that makes soy drinks which are very delicious. I called the Mokolo people who came and met with my farmers. During this meeting 1) I was so proud of my villagers, because it was so evident they were good farmers, they already knew how to farm soy, already knew the distances for seeding, when to weed, when to harvest etc. and 2) I felt "this is the successful work of the volunteer." Matching a need in the village--lack of market--with a resource we know of. And now from now on, the villagers are connected to this GIC and can continue to sell to them, even after I am gone. After the meeting each farmer decided how much they wanted to farm for soy, in a group of perhaps 16-20 farmers. Some farmed a hectare, others a demi-quarter hectare. They ordered the seed from the GIC, I wired their money to Mokolo, seed was sent to Garoua, I went and picked it up with a farmer and they divided it up and planted.


January 15: They just recently finished the harvest in December and I am feeling very blessed, and praising God because the sale of the harvest went on without a glitch. Sometimes when working with new groups you never know what may happen, whether someone might run away with the money, whether the group might never come to buy the harvest after all, whether they might back down on the promised price. But all went well, they sent the advance of money ahead of time (before New Years so that the farmers could celebrate with the money), they picked up the soy last week to ship down south and paid the rest of the payment, and all my farmers were happy. Just one example of possible agroforestry work in Cameroon.