There seems to be light at the end of the tunnel for cocoa. Reports from the National Cocoa and Coffee Board, NCCB, say prices per kilogramme of the cash crop witnessed an all-time high rate in the 2013-2014 farming season. Farmers received averagely FCFA 1,275 per kilogramme of the produce, the highest in the last three years. Marketable production in the 2013-2014 farming season witnessed a drop of 19,000 metric tons vis-à-vis the previous season to stand at 209,905 metric tons with 174,629 kg exported to Holland, Malaysia, Belgium and other countries.
This performance keeps Cameroon on the fourth position on the African chart of cocoa producing countries and the fifth in the world after Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Indonesia and Nigeria. This is certainly good news given the dwindling fortunes of the sector in past years where farmers dumped cocoa production in favour of food crops which they could eat and readily sell. The performance is however not good enough to maximize global opportunities for the sustainability of the sector both to farmers and the country's economy.
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