Introduction
Compared to other agricultural products, mushroom provides more start-up opportunities to low income farmers especially unemployed youths (women and girls) thus making them less vulnerable, reducing poverty and improving livelihood. This is possible because, mushroom can be cultivated in a very small piece of land. It's an agribusiness activity that can be done in the city and areas with limited arable land. According to findings, a square meter (3.3 feet) of land can produce an average of 17.5 kg of mushroom. Data from MINADER (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development) reveal that, Cameroon has about 240 000 have of potential agricultural land. Mushroom cultivation offers a window of opportunities to youths especially women and girls to develop it's value chain. The question is, where is the money? A lot of youths believe that a lot of money is needed to start up any agribusiness. Which is true but for a mushroom farm, less than $100 can start a small farm. Evidence from research reveal that the demand for wild edible and cultivated mushroom presently exceeds supply resulting from low capital investment to boost production, lack of trained personnel in mushroom biotechnology, poor post-harvest storage facilities and poor marketing strategies. These factors limiting the expansion of mushroom agribusiness has been corroborated with findings from Kinge et al., (2014). A small mushroom farm can be started with $ 40 (20 000 FCFA) or $ 20 USD (10 000 FCFA). According to findings from Royse et al., (2017), mushrooms represent a 63 billion USD market in 2013 with 38 % of medicinal mushrooms, 8 % wild and 54 % cultivated. Whether mushroom is coming from the wild or it is being cultivated, there are tremendous potentials to improve of livelihoods. Mushroom business can be extremely expensive if you want to engage in other aspects like spawn multiplication and production as well as processing. Despite its tremendous financial and material as well as technical investments needed, mushroom consumption in rural areas and urban centers around the world is steadily increasing. Between 1997 to 2013 cultivated mushroom consumption has increased from 1 kg to 4.7 kg (Royse et al., 2017). Wher as studies in the past revealed a decline in mushroom consumption between 1.1 kg to 1.4 kg of fresh mushrooms per person per year amnong the pygmy and the Bantus groups in the South of Cameroon (Dijk et al., 2003). In the rural areas of Sub Saharan Africa (SSA), harvesting wild mushroom is fast becoming a profession and its consumption per person has steadily increased in the recent past with an average of 3 kg per person. As more and more youths continue to grow oyster mushrooms, consumption patterns are expected to change with more and more people consuming cultivated oyster mushrooms because wild mushrooms are seasonal.
In Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) mushroom cultivation and its value chain has not been fully exploited. Picking mushrooms from the wild is a common practice in the rural areas and peri-urban areas. The awareness of it's medicinal and nutritional value among many people in the urban areas has made it to become a very lucrative activity. Individuals and restaurant businesses depend on rural people who pick mushrooms from the wild and sell to middlemen who resell in the cities at high prices. According to Dijk et al., (2003) indigenous knowledge on edible mushrooms and it ethnomycological importance has been well exploited and related to folklore taxonomy and scientific nomenclature. Surveying local populations in the south region of Cameroon comprising of Bantu farmers and Bagyeli (Pygmy) hunter-gatherers revealed mushroom usage by 30 families making up 319 persons (Dijk et al., 2003). The value attached to mushrooms is evident that ancestors have pass down well-developed knowledge of native edible fungi to generations and this corroborates with the findings of a survey conducted in the Tubah highlands, Babanki Tungoh and part of Bamessing village in 2012. Similar findings has been advanced by Douanla-Meli (2007) studying mushroom taxonomy in the forest in Mbalmayo the the Center region of Cameroon. Indigenous knowledge played an important role in identifying and distinguishing edible mushrooms from poisonous ones. Picking wild mushrooms was identified as one of the activities of youths (boys and girls), men and women with boys being active and women and girls involved in road side sales (marketing aspect). Harvesting termites was also one of the most prominent activities done by mostly boys (fig 2). But it should be noted that, harvesting wild mushroom is a very lucrative agribusiness activity that has not been fully exploited by the government and it still remains in the hands of the rural people depend on it for a living. The months of march, April and May often employs hundred of youths and women including men who go hunting for wild mushrooms. This activity can be professionalized and organised with lots of wild edible mushrooms harvested and sold in regional and international markets. Surveys, carried out revealed significant demand for wild mushrooms with the demand in cultivated Pleurotus species increasing as awareness increases.
Agribusiness potentials of mushroom and strategies for youths in Sub Saharan Africa.
The photo below shows the different activities of men, women, boys and girls in the villages. Boys and girls are very much involved in harvesting wild mushroom than women and men. This is because, it requires long hours of trekking in the bushes that is why many women are focus on selling mushrooms along roadsides. Survey in 2012, reveal a plethora of activities ranging from termite harvesting to picking of larva in raphia bushes and hunting green grasshoppers. All these are delicacies that provides cheap source of protein for resource-poor households.
In the SW region, the Mt. Cameroon and its environs offers an excellent habitat for the harvesting of wild mushrooms and has been identified as an important activity among Tole community and some people in Buwasa who carry logs of fruiting pleurotus spp., home from the forest after harvesting. The aim is to grow these mushrooms at home while maintaining its biotope. From discussions and interview conducted, 55 % of women often carry these logs home with 20 % of men and 25 % of youths returning to the spot each harvesting season. More than 85 % of these people can identify the specie of trees om which a particular mushroom grows and the time of the year and are also aware of the ethnomycological function of each mushroom specie harvested. This has been corroborated with findings done by Teke et al., (2018) in the Kilum-Ijim Forest. Some of the species identified in this forest have also been identified in Bamesssing, Ndop, Babanki Tungoh, with some growing uniquely in the forest with others growing in both forest and farmland. Fig 3 below is a sample collection of mushrooms found in both forest and farmland. In Sabga and Bamessing, mushroom hunters keep track of potential mushroom spots that are visited every season. During field discussions, these mushroom harvesters attest the decline in wild mushroom yield from farm land areas to the use of herbicides mostly roundup. This is the first indicator of the heavy use of herbicides in farmland and will further affect wild edible and medicinal fungus communities in forest areas especially the Abongphen forest in Babanki Tungoh which is inhabits less than 4 chimp population (more detailed survey needs to be done again to confirm. A male chimp was caught on camera in 2012) .
Fig. 3. Types of mushroom species growing in the forest and farmland
Source: adapted from Teke et al., 2018
a: Auricularia polytricha, b: Daldinia concentrica,
c: Ganoderma applanatum, d: Laetiporus sulphureus,
e: Polyporus dictyopus, f: Polyporus tenuiculus,
l: Vascellum llyodianum, m: Trametes versicolor,
n: Xylaria sp. )
and others growing in both forest and and farmland:
(g): Termitomyces microcarpus,h; Termitomyces sp.,
i: Termitomyces titanicus,j; Lentinus squarrosulus,
k; Termitomyces straitus.
Moreover, Yongabi and Ahgo (2001), and Kinge et al., (2011) have reported the use of 22 and 15 species of edible and medicinal mushrooms in the South West and North West Regions of Cameroon. Nevertheless, more findings on the medicinal value and cure for certain ailments by mushrooms still need some attention. Most often, people on the survey respond positively to the use of different mushroom species as food. Currently with high unemployment, more youths are getting involved in wild mushroom harvesting and sales. Many young boys (photo a and b below) in Sabga-Babanki Tungoh in the NW/SW regions of Cameroon have been identified harvesting and selling Termitomyces titanicus and Pleurotus spp., Some of them display their products using ropes made from Raphia membilensis or some simply use little dishes. Prices range from 500 FCFA (1 USD) to 3000 FCFA (6 USD). In the North West Region, this activity begins in late March after rains and ends in May with peak harvest in April. As illustrated in Fig.2 above, this activities provides direct employment to women, girls and boys thus increasing or supplementing household income. With increasing cost of living (health care, education and nutrition challenges), selling mushrooms along the road from Bamenda to Nkambe and other cities is a full time job. People or families who invests a lot of time in hunting and harvesting mushrooms often dry some and preserved in an area free from moisture. This dry mushroom is sold from the month of August when mushroom is very scarce. The price for a plastic bucket (15litres) is between 15000 to 25000 FCFA (approximately 30 - 50 USD) in the cities and 13,000 FCFA (approximately 26 USD) in the rural area. It is often based on luck to find dry mushroom in the market from the month of August and its demand is extremely high.
Fig. 4. Youths picking wild edible mushrooms
a: Pleurotus spp., growing on tree back in maize farm in Buea - SW region
b: Youths selling Termitomyces titanicus harvested in the field in Sabga-Babanki Tungoh
NW region. Source: Field data, 2012 - 2016
Fig.5. Edible wild mushroom in Buea - SWR
a: Termitomyces titanicus in market
b: Pleurotus populinus on dead wood in maize farm
c: Pleurotus spp., on dead wood in farmers home
d: Maitake (Grifola frondosa) decomposing wood
In fig. 5 (photo from field survey in Buea), this type of mushroom is also know as the sheep's or ram's head growing at the base of hardwood trees. It is prolific in the South West region. They grow quite large and become too tough to eat and should be harvested when they are still young. Older specimens can be dried, powdered and used for soups and sauces. Whereas in fig 5b is the P. populinus is closely related to the P. ostreatus (fig.5c) and have a tiny stalk and can also grow hard is not harvested young. Fig. 5a was shot in the market in Buea and the trader (woman of about 45yrs) confirmed that she buys from the NW region and re-sell in Buea. Each bundle had 5 mushroom sold at 2500 each. Picking wild mushrooms is a full time job for women and children in rural areas and offers a great business opportunity for women in the urban areas. Mushroom is a delicacy especially in the cities and depending on the size, it's price varies depending on the actual state (fresh or dry). A 20 liter bucket of dry mushroom in the village cost a minimum of 10.000 FCFA approximately 20 USD. The price increases with season and with the location. The further a client is from the rural market, the higher the price of the mushroom be it dry or fresh
Today, global mushroom cultivation has witness a tremendous increase of about twenty-fold, with peak production recorded in the 1980s and 1990s (Boa, 2004; Patel, 2013). Chiang (2014) underscores this increase to an escalation in the demand for specialty mushrooms in European and Asian markets with Asian countries dominating world production and consumption. Lentinus edodes is mostly cultivated in Japan, China, Australia and the USA with China the major producer of Pleurotus spp. Mushroom consumption in the United States has increased sharply in recent years, providing potential opportunities for mushroom growers (Boa, 2004; Patel, 2013; and Barney, 1997). This is contradictory to African markets where mythical believes on mushroom cultivation is preponderant especially in rural communities with Cameroon not rolled out of this perception.
Fig.6. Variation of Pleurotus ostreatus colour exposed to varying lighting in Buea - SW region
a: Pleurotus ostreatus in dark with little light (PAID-WA)
b: Pleurotus ostreatus in full light in a green house (PAID-WA)
c: Pleurotus in full light outside on a shelve in Bokwango-Buea.
Source: CEDEP Mushroom project in Buea at PAID-WA
An on-farm demonstration project (Fig.7.) was carried out in Buea, Sabga and Ndop and results obtained was used to train farmers and students including youths on mushroom cultivation. This project was successful thanks to funding from the Pollination Project USA and Teach A Man to Fish UK through the Pan African Awards in Education. The results from this project can be replicated to other localities because the type of substrate material, its availability and affordability was also considered in regards to temperature variation. In the NW region whose temperature range between 12°C to 30 °C with relative humidity between 90 to 28 % whereas in Buea temperature ranges from 22 °C to 30 °C with relative humidity ranging between 97 - 77 % and areas like Limbe, Tiko, Kumba and Muyuka ranges between 27 °C and 33 °C with relative humidity almost the same. To grow mushrooms successfully, aspects like this should be considered. The type of substrate material is also very important. In the NW region a lot of agricultural waste from rice husk, rice bran, eucalyptus saw dust, corn cobs and corn flour whereas in the SW, Palm cones, corn cobs, corn flour and saw dust from varied hard wood and eucalyptus is available. Growing mushroom on these different substrates in these two regions have yield very impressive results.
Fig.7. Pleurotus ostreatus growing on different substrates in NW and SW regions
a: Rice husk and bran, eucalyptus saw dust and corn cobs with temp range between 19°C - 31°C, relative humidity between 80 -31 % respectively - Ndop
b: Palm cones only, temp range between 22°C - 30°C, relative humidity between 97 - 77 % respectively PAID-WA Buea.
C: Corn cob and flour, mixed saw dust, rice husk. Temp and relative humidity same as in b above. mushroom fruiting in green house in PAID-WA Buea.
d: Corn cobs and flour, eucalyptus saw dust, rice husk. Temp range 18 - 25 °C with relative humidity between 80 - 97 % in Bokwango - Buea.
e: Corn cob and flour, saw dust with temp ranging between 27 - 33 °C farm in mile 16 Buea
f: Rice bran and husk, saw dust, less than 3 kg of corn flour, with temp range between 19°C - 31°C, relative humidity between 80 -31 % respectively - Ndop
During the on-farm trials in the various regions, farmers farms were visited from the 3rd day after inoculation with a complete spawn-run at 21 ± 3 days with primordial initiation and grow-out at 21 ± 6 days. Some bags already had primordial and fruiting bodies weighing 200g at 21 ± 3 days. This results were almost similar to trials in Sabga and Ndop with complete spawn-run at 21 ± 3 and primordial initiation and grow-out at 21 ± 4. More interesting results have been obtained between 20–25 days at 28°C – 30°C with tap water applied daily or as needed using a knapsack sprayer keeping relative humidity in the production room at 85–95% (Mamiro et al., 2014). Using a knapsack sprayer is the best way to sprinkle water on mushroom bags and also keep the room moist. Most often, tap, spring or well water can also be used. Avoided using water from streams and rivers because it may contain some contaminants and mushroom will easily assimilate; this can cause serious food poisoning.
In the South West region, carrying out training in mushroom cultivation is often a challenge not only at the level of getting good spawns but at the level of getting high youth involvement. This very low involvement is justified by youths inability to develop a sustainable market for mushroom with most of them complaining about difficult market access. Whereas in the NW region precisely in the Bamenda and its environs, Ndu village, youth are gradually getting into mushroom cultivation though with a lot of skepticism on its demand and access to viable spawns. Youths in the NW region perceive it as very lucrative and easy form of farming comparing to growing maize, beans and vegetables that takes 3 - 4 months to harvest with more inputs involved. Mushroom cultivation requires little or no inputs with minimal capital investments at the initial stage. Youths can also get started by renting houses and abandoned structures and converting them into mushroom farms. By linking to other farmers or spawn producers, they can get assistance start.
For wild edible mushrooms whose demand is higher than cultivated Pleurotus spp.(white or gray oyster mushroom), youths can focus on quality control aspect. Inventory communities or villages with high wild mushroom yield, identify gatherers and drill them on how to harvest mushrooms free from physical contaminants (sand, soil and others). Provide them with field packaging be ready to provide them a ready income before they can get to the roadside or market to sell it. From experience, mushroom gatherers will be ready to sell their produce to whoever can pay immediately at the level of the farm, bush or forest. This is because during pick season, there is dumping and mushrooms often gets bad with maggots colonizing it especially when the moisture content is high (> 90 %). Venturing in this activity, a refrigerator is necessary, good sun drying system made of iron sheets. On a very hot day with temperature ranging between 25 - 30°C with 5 - 8 hours of sunshine, a mushroom with 80 - 90 % of humidity can loss almost every to the scorching heat. It is advisable to store dry mushroom in dry place with low relative humidity to avoid mold. Mushroom can also be place in an air tight plastic bag and air every 3 weeks depending on the ambient temperature and relative humidity. Cheap packaging material like plastic wrap or transparent plastic bowl can also be used as packaging. Always factor the price of the packaging and most people may prefer plastic bowls because it can be used for other things. Fresh wild mushrooms can be parcel and place in a refrigerator at 4°C and sold out slowly. If the business is slow, mushroom can be frozen for long and only taken out only on demand. Freezing mushroom is the best option especially with a deep freezer. Before you freeze it's imperative that the food safety techniques are applied especially bare-hand contact to food. Make sure physical, chemical and biological contaminants are void. In fact, you have to take sometime and organise your work surface using stainless steel utensils especially clean knife, disposable paper and gloves. It is advisable that anyone working should be neatly dressed and avoid frequent moving in and out of the work area and above all cover your hair. Once mushroom is frozen, a consumer can only defroze it during cooking so it is important that packaged mushroom should be 100 % clean. If you can get a certification, that will be great and always label your item correctly explaining to consumers how to handle it.
Fig 8. Aurelie Zanfack (in green farm wear) and Stephanie all students of PAID-WA Buea show casing progress in mushroom value chain. Aurelie Zanfack defended her BSc. on mushroom value chain. She can tell you how growing mushrooms in school changed her life.
The photos above show how mushrooms can be grown and package for the market. Value can also be added by adding vegetables like broccoli, carrots and green beans. Packaging and branding is very crucial as well as storage. Food safety handling is very important. Most youth agribusinesses in Africa especially in Cameroon, don't have good food safety handling and monitoring programs. CEDEP (Centre for Development and Environmental Protection) is currently working on better methods to handle and process mushrooms. Developing a more reliable agribusiness franchise in mushroom will be a better way to get youths out of poverty especially women and girls.
Youths Perception to agribusiness
According to FAO, CTA and IFAD (2014) education and continuous training remains key to overcoming development challenges in rural and urban areas especially in the domain of agriculture. Not only is there a direct link between food security and education of youths especially in value-chain development, it has also been shown that basic numeracy and literacy skills help to improve farmers livelihood (FAO, 2007). Unfortunately, youth strongly perceive agricultural activities and its related occupations as non lucrative and laborious task destined for people who have little or nothing to contribute to development. A survey carried out randomly on 300 youths in the Buea and Bamenda revealed more than 70 % of youths especially those in the Universities were not ready to be professional farmers and it was surprising that about 50 % of the sampled youths were agriculture students at the university and 3/4 of them were not ready to engage in agriculture as a full time occupation. All students and youths who have participated in our mushroom cultivation project were shy to talk about their products to consumers. Less than 1 % or 1 in every 20 youth are proud to be farmers an actually canvass for their products. This also reveal a huge gap in their curriculum thus the need of agribusiness incubation hubs. Most youths don't understand that production is only complete when it reaches its final consumer. Today's agribusiness challenges is at the level of processing and marketing. If stakeholders can put in place mechanisms to foster the processing of agricultural products with respect to international norms (ISO) then more youths can increase production at farm level. The bias and discrimination in the distribution of wealth and resources especially equipment and training opportunities should be discouraged band more support should be focus on those who are ready to work and already have projects in the field. Small agribusiness activities with potentials for expansion should be supported with equipment training. A lot of good initiatives have died at the beginning because of lack of support (technical and material). Most often people tend to focus on consuming imported products to the detriment of local products. All this has discourage a lot of youths venturing into agriculture as a profession with a lot of negative information being propagated.
This negative perception is being propagated by stereotypes reinforced by cultural beliefs and the media who often project rural farmers in Africa as poor and living below 1USD per day. For example, Lithuanian and Latvian youth perceive agriculture as back-breaking hours in the field, low skill requirement and low wages (Kusis et al., 2014) while Malawian youth recognize agriculture as dirty work and demeaning with relatively small profits difficult to reconcile with the high labour requirements (Webster and Ganpat, 2014; Chinsinga and Chasukwa, 2014). Besides, youth perception about agriculture in the Caribbean Islands is associated with the region’s history with slavery (Mangal, 2009; Webster and Ganpat, 2014). Mangal (2009) indicated that youth in the Caribbean Island view agriculture as an area for failures and persons who are punished for not doing well in the pure sciences and other more prestigious academic fields. The differences reported by studies conducted across various regions and localities recognizes the heterogeneity of the global youth population in their perceptions, experiences, attitudes and needs. The challenges faced by young men taking up agriculture as a profession has been exacerbated by economic hardship, poor management of youth-led agribusiness projects by officials and misplace priorities especially from Government officials. According t0 FAO, CTA and IFAD, (2014) The challenges for women are increasing as more women are fade up with agribusiness schemes that does not meet standards and can't compete with imported products. This therefore makes agribusiness value chain activities more of an armature activities for illiterates. Youths need direct financial, material and technical support to youths to be able to take agribusiness as an occupation. This can only work if youths already working and have interest can be contacted, trained and supported. This will encourage others to get involved in the value chain of the different agribusiness activity. By this, we shall avoid having a lot of young people trying to do the same thing in the community and at the end, no body is successful.
4. Conclusion
Recently, a lot of NGOs, Agricultural institutions and prominent investors like Aliko Dangote have made statements emphasizing the need to invest in Agriculture to move Africa especially Sub Saharan Africa forward. As a result, a lot of small community based organization have mushroomed not only to address issues related to agriculture, environment and renewable energy but to also get out of poverty. Why is it that lots of NGO and government keep funding the same projects over and over, yet Africa especially Sub Saharan Africa is still under developed. Is it that most youths in Africa see this as an easy source of money or as a means to develop their communities and themselves?
Mushroom agribusiness and youth engagement can only be technical and material support especially to those who have demonstrated that they can produce and market their produce. Not everyone in a community must grow mushroom. Lots of donor keep directing funds to projects that target a great part of the community. When everyone in the community grows mushroom, who is going to buy? Thus the agribusiness initiative is deducted on arrival. Empowering 1 or 2 mushroom agribusinesses in a community can create jobs and bring lots of income to those working in that agribusiness as well as to the initiators. The problem of getting everyone involved in a particular agribusiness has cause a lot of problems ranging from dumping to frustration by farmers. This is the case with the poultry sector. In a small community, more than a third of the population has been trained on poultry farming. Now everyone has a poultry, supply automatically exceeds demand. On a typical market day, the price of chicken falls far below the cost of production as a result farmers incur losses, farms are shot down and the poverty cycle continues this time with a lot of frustration.
According to American Farm Bureau Federation (2018), farm and ranch families comprise less than 2 % of American population ( 327.2 million) as of 2018. In 2017, 87 % of farms in the USA are owned and run by families and friends and in 2018, the percentage has increased to 98 % (Christopher and James, 2018). Whereas in Africa, almost every family owns a farm and yet there is still acute food shortage. A lot of NGOs and United Nations as well as multinational and unilateral institutions are implementing various projects and programs to increase food production in Africa. Lots of research and support has been done yet, there is no improvement. What is the cause of this acute meltdown of African agriculture? African governments need to understand that before they engage in politics, agriculture which is the backbone of every economy must be well develop to be able to feed its population. All SSA governments focus on degenerating political issues to crisis then conflict and finally war which ends up destroying what has already been built with limited financial and technological support. A lot of farmers especially in conflict prone areas like the NW and SW regions of Cameroon, North Kivu in Congo, South Sudan, Sudan etc, are being affected directed by war and conflict. Smallholder farmers suffer unbearable loses which the governments often attributes it to collateral damage. Whereas the develop nations protect their farms, farmers and animal production systems it is the contrary in Africa where the military and armed groups take pride in killing animals especially exotic animals, destroying maize farms and food barns (more of this in our next blog: Farmers trapped between the Army and Armed groups - The Case of the North West and South West Regions of Cameroon). For SSA to experience growth in the agribusiness sector, small initiatives that can bring significant positive change must be supported and youths must be given access to land, income, equipment and technology (training).
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