African plantain producers are struggling to meet demand, even though the demand is 10 million tonnes produced each year in Africa. Double that to meet demand. So how to produce more, in a reasoned way? This is the challenge launched by several partners.
In her chronicle of raw materials, Marie-Pierre Olphand revealed that it would take 20 million tonnes of plantain to meet consumer demand for alloco, missolé, or even boiled plantain on the African continent. Twice as much as is produced today. In Central and West Africa, demand is permanent, particularly in Cameroon and Côte d’Ivoire. And comes up once morest a seasonal production. As a result, outside harvest periods, consumers are forced to follow a dry diet while looking for substitutes such as European cereals. During peak production, on the other hand, there is a glut and losses are inevitable.
According to our colleague from Radio France internationale (RFI), the challenge is therefore to manage to better preserve the fruit by storage or processing infrastructures, to make it a dry product, such as flour or crisps. And at the same time, to increase volumes: the market to be taken is huge.
Production must change scale but not at any price
But how to widen the small perimeters of the home gardens in which the plantain tree grows associated with the cocoa tree, cassava or even groundnut, generally without pesticides? How to move to large-scale cultivation without falling into the excesses of conventional intensive agriculture? This is the question on which several experts have been working for years, and which has found an answer via the Initiative for the ecological intensification of plantain in Africa (IPA) launched this month of March. A project launched by the Center for International Cooperation in Agronomic Research for Development (CIRAD) and several partners which aims to unite the actors of the African sectors, and above all to convince institutions and producers that it is possible to develop a high-performance crop , cost-effective and environmentally friendly.
Plantain destined for the local market can do without pesticides
The characteristic of plantain is that it is intended for a local market, and that it does not have the obligation to meet the standard required for export to Europe. At most, the fruits travel by truck for sub-regional trade. “Growing a fine product calibrated with pesticides is therefore not justified”, explains a specialist in the sector, Sylvain Dépigny, facilitator for the plantain banana sector at CIRAD.
For consumers it is also a financial issue. The price of plantain can be multiplied by seven in production areas in times of shortage. More plantain, over a longer period of the year, would guarantee lower and more stable prices.
With RFI
