Counter season culture by excellence, market gardening has become a large-scale activity in the municipality of Grand-Popo in southern Benin a few cables from the Benin-Togolese border of Hillacondji, where several thousand people are involved successfully.
With his small family, Andros Johnson transplants the young shoots of culture on boards. A child on the back of his mother, the poor woman despite the weight of her child lay in the work. Next were Marc the eldest of the family and Pascaline the younger. All of them helped the parents in their work, yesterday morning, in the early hours ... assisted by three young boys who get their earnings of the week, from this hard work.
The Johnson family manages to make ends meet through market gardening on a farm that covers an area of 300 m2, in the town of Agoue on the outskirts of the Inter-State road Cotonou-Lome. According to the head of the family, Andros Johnson, ‘’what market gardening does to me and my family is enormous. It is thanks to this activity that I feed the family and provide for all our needs. Starting from the schooling of my children to health care without forgetting the needs of clothing and others...I do not complain...’’
On the exploited plot is a variety of seedlings. Hot pepper, vegetables, carrots, onion. All these vegetables are sell on the site. According to Andros, salespersons come to stock up on the site. Some restaurant or hotel managers do the same with orders lettuce leaves, onions and sometimes vegetables "Gboman". Like Andros, other producers settled along the Grand-Popo-Hillacondji Inter-State Road to make their butter in the off-season crops.
On about twenty kilometres along the asphalt road, several hectares of land is exploited for market gardening. Onion, tomato, chilly, carrot, lettuce, cabbage, Pepper ... a wide range of vegetable products is grown there and sold to national markets and those of the countries of the sub-region such as Nigeria, Togo, Ghana and Niger.
Guaranteed profitabilityOn 7500 m2 of land operated by Prosper, its income is close to four million CFA francs (about 6,850 US dollars). With a variety of crops, like all the vegetable growers in the commune, the land Chief sells the crops by plank. The onion is sold at 15000 francs (approximately 26 US dollars) per plate; the carrot at 18000 francs (30 US dollars), the vegetables (Gboman) between 4000 and 7000 francs (between 7 and 12 dollars).
The dimensions of a board are 2.5 by 16 meters. In the case of lettuce, it is market by foot. Therefore, one foot of lettuce comes back to 25 francs. Cabbage, on the other hand, is sold according to weight. With a turnover sometimes estimated at tens of millions of CFA francs, (17.886 dollars), some producers do not intend to give up this activity despite the threat of land victim of the salinity of the ocean nearby.
Before the upsurge of Covid-19 sanitary crisis, Prosper reported selling monthly more than 800 thousand francs (1453 dollars) of onions and 1.5 million francs (2460 dollars) of tomatoes. According to him, when all the agronomic conditions are met, its monthly turnover is close to five million francs (6819 dollars). The monitoring of activities is one of the major problems of farmers. With the support of the managers of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries (Meap), the vegetable gardener benefit from some technical advice related to production. However, more and more this follow-up is becoming rare or sometimes unnecessary because the market gardeners do not feel that they take great advantage of the presence of managers. For those responsible for the APRM, the Mono and Couffo departments have only two specialists in crop production who cannot carry out monitoring tasks alone. Besides, some structures affiliated to producer groups are increasingly experiencing crises that undermine the impartial role of assistance to market gardeners.
Diverse actors
Unlike Prosper, who had just graduated from University, Andros himself was an angler who converted to market gardening. As the latter several anglers have converted into market gardeners most of the residents practised artisanal fishing inherited from their grandparents.
Initially, the population of the municipality of Grand Popo and its environs did not have much knowledge of vegetable production "when we started to produce, it had caused an emulation at the level of many people who were looking for an alternative to the practice of fishing that became unprofitable", according to André, a well-established vegetable farmer. Although Coffi has become one of the largest professional market gardeners in the municipality of Grand-Popo operating an area of almost 18 hectares, many fishing families also manage to pull their pinout of the game. "Not only is market gardening profitable, but it is a full-time activity for us and we are self-employed, even though before that we spend up to three months, not fishing. Moreover, when we go on the waters, the owners of the Nets cut themselves the lion's share. At the same time, you have a family to feed and the children have to go to school,’ defends Ayivi, another producer of Ayiguinnou. Firmin, a first-class student at the General Education College of the Municipality, managed with a monthly income of 20,000 francs (about 17, 89 dollars). "With the money I earn, I can easily get away with it in school. This allows me to help my parents with certain needs, he explains. What a noble thing!
By Serge Babylas de Souza
