In the face of dwindling prices and quality of major agricultural products such as cocoa and coffee following the deregulation of the sector in the nineties, government and its development partners have been putting heads together to ensure that farmers do not continue to lose out to middlemen. The Ministry of Trade therefore organised a two-day workshop on “Marketing of Cocoa/Coffee: The Role of the Warehouse Receipt System” that ended yesterday in the coastal resort town of Kribi.
The system entails the stocking of agricultural produce in community warehouses for preservation and sale later. In return, the farmer receives a receipt that serves as collateral security to enable them secure a loan from a bank or micro finance organisation to carry out any other income-generating activity while waiting for their produce to be sold when the prices would have appreciated. According to the General Manager of the National Cocoa and Coffee Board, NCCB, Michael Ndoping, the system ensures that the farmers finance their marketing activities and reap the most benefits; instead of relying on middlemen, whom he says, are for the most part, fronts for multi-national firms. He explained that in order for the system to successfully take off in the country, there would be need to train professional managers to run the warehouses.
According to the representative of the Minister of Trade, Leopold Boumsong, the holding of the workshop was a welcome development as it would help in proffering solutions to the problem of marketing agricultural produce through another system from the hitherto over-dependence on middlemen who tend to recoup almost all the profits. He expressed hope that after sharing the experiences of Tanzania and Niger where the marketing system has been successful, it would enable Cameroonian stakeholders to take off on a good footing. Explaining the raison d’être of the workshop, the Economic Affairs Officer at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, UNCTAD, Geneva, Switzerland, Frida Youssef said the results of a study ordered by her organisation on improving the marketing of agricultural produce were to be discussed at the workshop.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Trade, cocoa and coffee, which are major export crops, are produced by some 600,000 farmers. These exports account for between 25 and 30 per cent of Cameroon’s exports – excepting oil. The workshop that was organised in collaboration with UNCTAD, NCCB and the European Union, was attended by representatives of farmer organisations, marketing cooperatives and international organisations.
