By Leocadia Bongben
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has embarked on a project to help smallholder farmers produce sustainable palm oil.
Dubbed ‘Capacity Building, Technical Support for Smallholders, and Improvement of Sustainability in the Palm Oil Sector,’ the project is carried out in Ngwei district in the South region.
The project is being carried out amid the backdrop of palm oil, which has been the most widely consumed vegetable oil globally for more than 30 years and has shaped a sizable economic sector globally, with tropical nations suffering various difficulties.
In Cameroon, this sector has grown steadily, becoming important over the years with the ever-greater ambitions to expand planted areas to compensate for a structural production deficit in the national palm oil production, pegged at around 150,000 metric tons for almost ten years.
To compensate for the shortfall, controversial initiatives like the Herakles Farms project—whose operations were argued by NGOs to be more prone to forest degradation than the production of palm oil—have been promoted. The Ministry of Agriculture recently declared that three palm oil extraction facilities would be built, one of which would be located in the Ngwei district.
In Ngwei, palm oil is the main agricultural crop, and its exploitation structures determine the local socio-economic environment, which largely explains the presence of many small-scale producers.
However, the development of oil palm cultivation at Ngwei unveils concerns about nature conservation and the preservation of significant biodiversity. The multiplicity of palm growers is leading to urban sprawl and the retreat of the forest, which is taking away local biodiversity.
Against this backdrop, WWF-Cameroon supported the project targeting small-scale oil palm growers in Ngwei.
According to Roberty Essama, the project coordinator, farmers employ methods that are not very sustainable, such as throwing waste into the community’s streams, leading to environmental pollution and endangering fish and biodiversity. They also do not consider high conservation values when planting. Farmers therefore require capacity-building capacity to increase production for more intentional environmental protection, Essama added.
“They can plant sustainable palm oil with the environmental agreements of the partners, who have more sustainable production chains. And with these partners, they will be able to better profit from their production units,” Essama said.
Deforestation occurs when all the trees are removed from the farm, impacting forests. Farmers lack contemporary techniques to maintain the high conservation qualities of trees when they establish plantations.
According to Essama, the project urged smallholders to make better use of already-existing plantations rather than managing and establishing new ones because the latter are underutilized and produce little.
To increase the value of their current plants, farmers can learn new training modules on effective plant management techniques. Plantation renewal, the introduction of novel types, and good planting management procedures are a few examples since planting and management techniques are crucial.
“One of the things that will ensure the durability on the ground are these partnerships that link smallholders to the big companies. They have programs to support small producers.
He maintained that agro-industries have the social or societal responsibility to support their small producers so that they are also linked to the entire sustainability chain. They will benefit from the good practices, the logistics support that will be given to the company, everything that is there, like agricultural inputs, that the company can provide, and the technical support for them because they have technicians who will support these small producers daily to better manage their plantations.
The second phase of the project will continue in 2025 after the first phase, banking on the partnerships established with agro-industries. He said additional funding would be negotiated to continue implementing partnerships.
MakondoSeppe-Makek oil palm basin is the second largest oil palm-growing basin in Ngwei District. It has a cooperative with active members interested in sustainable palm oil production.