National Cocoa, Coffee Association

Stakeholders held concertation meetings in Yaounde last week to finalise preparations.

Everything being equal, a national association for cocoa and coffee farmers will soon see the light of day in the country to better uphold the plight of farmers so that they fully reap the fruits of their labour. Meeting in Yaounde last week, in one of the preparatory meetings to get the association operational, participants were unanimous that farmers in the country are so scattered that they cannot jointly appraise their problems, their magnitude as well as where and how to go about the solutions.

According to Clement Fonteh, vice president of the North West Cooperative Union Limited, who also doubles as the president of Bamenda Area Cooperative Union Limited, the new association will bring farmers together to reflect, diagnose their problems and see where and how to channel them to the authorities for solution. They said formerly cocoa and coffee farmers were a branch of the Cocoa and Coffee Interprofessional Council and that coming out as an association will permit them to pursue a common goal, that of maximising production and sale of their produce. “People in a peer group would always want to have their interest protected and that is what we seek to do”, Mr Fonteh said.

Organised by the Cocoa and Coffee Interprofessional Council support programme in partnership with the Cameroon – European Union Cooperation, last week’s workshop, which lasted three days, was to evaluate the path covered thus far in preparation and what is still needed to take the association off the ground in no distant future. One of the farmers, Mosima James Lobe, president of the South West regional college of cocoa and coffee production said preparations to kick-start the association started three years ago. “We are already drafting the constitution after which we will embark on sensitisation campaigns to the regions, he said, adding that, “we will strive to come up with delegates from the divisional, regional and national levels where a constituted assembly is supposed to be formed and the officers put in place”. At the end of the meeting, participants rejoiced that government, through the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, is already providing farmers with inputs to boost yields. The intervention they said is responsible for a steady improvement in productivity. “It is thanks to the intervention that the production of cocoa has catapulted from 175,000 tons three years ago to 205,000 tons annually as at last year”, Mr Mosima said.