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New Techniques, New Profits for Tomato Farmers
By Fulgence Zamblé
ABIDJAN, Jan 19, 2011 (IPS) – Even while the country has faced civil war and political crisis, innovative research organisations have worked to meet the challenges of food security and rural poverty.
Côte d’Ivoire’s domestic production of vegetables meets less than 60 percent of consumers’ needs. Growers could make up the deficit – and increase their year-round incomes – by adopting new techniques that produce several harvests each year.
On his low-lying half-hectare of land, not far from Abidjan, François Adou usually grows cabbage, aubergine, potatoes, tomatoes and groundnuts on mounds. A year ago, the 43-year-old dug trenches in an 800 square metre section to devote it exclusively to a new technique for growing tomatoes.
The non-soil, or hydroponic, technique is being promoted by an independent organisation working on alleviating poverty in rural areas, the Agribusiness and Contract Farming House (known in French as GenieAgro). Farmers plant tomatoes or other crops in a substrate made up of cocoa hull fibres, sawdust and industrial waste of plant origin.
This mixture can be used to fill plastic-lined trenches, wooden boxes, or sacks supported above the ground on wooden trestles. The plants grow directly in this material.
Farmers smiling
“It’s a soil-less cultivation technique,” Adou told IPS, adding that the results have been great. In the first three-month planting cycle – March to May – he harvested between four and five tonnes of tomatoes. In August, he was already preparing for another harvest – this time anticipating six tonnes.
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