Yarm cultivation: A flourishing yet undecorated business in Buea - Cameroon

Yarm is a common commodity in all local markets between the Months of May and August!

Yams according to science.jrank.org are any of the 10 economically important specie of Dioscorea, a genus in the monocotyledonous family Dioscoriaceae. These species, all tropical in their origin, are cultivated for their edible tubers (enlarged, fleshy, usually underground storage stems). Yarm is eaten around the world and called differently. In the United States, for example the name yam is often misapplied to the sweet potato (Ipomea batatas).

By Yemti Harry Ndienla

There are two centers of yam cultivation worldwide. The first is the high rainfall region of western Africa - from Ivory Coast to Cameroon. Here the most important species are the white yam (Dioscorea rotundata) and the yellow yam (D. cayenensis), named for the color of their tuber's flesh. The second center is Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and neighboring regions where the most commonly cultivated specy is the Asiatic yam (D. alata). Secondary areas of yam cultivation are the West Indies, Pacific Islands, and southeastern United States (from Louisiana to Georgia). However, most yam species originated in Asia and Africa; only one, the cush-cush yam (D. trifida), is native to the New World.

In Africa and particularly West Africa, yams are usually prepared as fufu - made from peeling, cutting, and boiling the tuber, and then pounding it into gelatinous dough. It is served with soups or stews or cooked raw in palm oil. Nutritionally, the yams are equivalent to the common potato, containing 80-90% carbohydrate, 5-8% protein, and about 3.5% mineral. Yams are not feed to livestock because they are more expensive than other kinds of animal feed.

In Buea – Cameroon, where the crop is highly cultivated, various species are harvested during the peak period (Between May and August) by the various farmers, who either work as individuals or as groups. Unfortunately for the farmers, the prices of yam in the market also fall within this period due to the fact that most farmers harvest at the same time couple with the absence of modern transformation and storage facilities. Consequently, most of the farmers are forced to auction their produce to buyam-sellams who either sell in the neighboring towns or transport to neighboring countries.

Tanyi Augustine, a member of Bokova Yam Farmers’ group regrets having any support from government to facilitate transformation or storage. Tanyi, underscores the fact that “yam farming could be a very lucrative business if properly managed.”
Government officials are however insisting that the farmers can only benefit if they work as groups and do viable projects for the various programs put in place by government.
Though most of the money given by government to farmers as loans has never yielded the required fruits, Agnes Mediki, chief of agric post, Bokova, near Buea, however revealed that government has made money available in a local bank in Buea, to assist farmers under an agric program. But many farmers believe it was just another sing-song.

The world production of yams according to science.jrank.org amounts to about 22 million tons (20 million metric tons) per year, of which two-thirds comes from tropical West Africa. “Yams are to tropical West Africans what wheaten bread is to North Americans and Europeans,” states science.jrank.org. In tropical west-Africa, many social and religious festivals are associated with planting and harvesting yams. The story of the “New – Yarm’ festival (celebration marking the yarm season) is quite common in Nigeria.
Besides, yams are a source of steroids and alkaloids-chemicals that are extremely active physiologically in vertebrate animals. The most important yam steroid is diosgenin used in the production of birth-control pills. Alkaloids from yams have been used to kill fish and to poison darts and arrows for hunting. Some yams are poisonous to humans because of their high alkaloid content, and their tubers must be boiled before eating to remove the toxins.