During recent years the cultivation of rice has received more attention,
especially in the experimental gardens. The forest land inhabitants have
also begun to lay out water and hill rice fields in great extent, and it
is only a question of time for the Cameroons to become a rice producing
country. But whether the negroes will ever be capable of carrying out
the troublesome cultivation of water rice, with the necessary
transplanting and careful watering, is regarded as doubtful.
One can depend with greater confidence on the exportation of maize and
millet from the forest land and the drier hinterland, as soon as means
of transport are provided, as it has been found that the black can be
entrusted with this cultivation. Rice, as well as maize and millet, and
also bananas and pines, which grow in great quantities, would be, as
native cultivation solely, open to question.
Regarding the cultivation of coffee, the greatest hopes were raised in
the first years of occupation of the colony. The Cameroon Mountains
resemble in every respect the island of San Thomé and Fernando-Po,
where, in 1884, a flourishing coffee cultivation existed. Nothing was
more natural than the expectation than that a fresh impetus would be
given to coffee cultivation on the mainland, but these hopes were not
fulfilled, and now scarcely any coffee plantations are to be found. Tea
was planted in Buea by Deistel, and the tea-shrub developed splendidly.
Plantation cocoa has borne the preponderating share of the total exports
of that product in recent years, the areas in bearing having increased
as follows: 1909, 13,328 acres; 1910, 15,290 acres; 1911, 17,560 acres;
1912, 20,438 acres. The large increase of exports in 1912 is attributed
to the very favourable weather in that year. It is stated that more
care, with artificial manuring, is wanted in the cultivation, and that
the chief diseases and pests of cocoa, such as brown rot, “cockchafer
grubs,” and “bark bugs,” are not under control. Nevertheless the future
for cocoa is believed to be good.
Much was expected of tobacco planting, especially in Bibundi, where
tobacco was planted at first, and the quality was excellent, although
the cultivation was proved to be too dear and too difficult on account
of the dampness of the climate. In 1902 there was a deficit of 200,000
marks, and for some time the cultivation was discontinued. Attempts
were made in 1911 to encourage tobacco planting in the German colonies
by the guarantees of a definite price for quantities of at least 100
cwts. raised and prepared in those colonies. The planted area in
plantations in the Cameroons increased from fifty acres in 1911 to 383
in 1912; 230 acres of the latter had yielded a crop. In view of the
expensive nature of the cultivation, it was hoped that Cameroons’ leaf
for wrappers would gain a good market.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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