Productivity Analysis Among Smallholder Rice Farmers: Policy Implications for Nutrition Security in the West Region of Cameroon

Assessment of Ngoketunjia rice value chain actors’ performance in Cameroon

“…This resulted in a profit of FCFA 27.63 (US$0.045) per kilogram. The results for this actor category seem better than those that Fani et al (2020) found in their work on productivity analysis among smallholder rice farmers in the West Region of Cameroon, namely, 67,000 FCFA/ ha (US$109.84). The profit per kilogram for other actors was further calculated for one bag of rice each actor purchased and the associated cost.…”

“…In contrast, retailers sold a kilogram to consumers at FCFA 185.0 (US$ 0.30) and had an average income of FCFA 1,598,400.0 (US$ 2620.33). Though the average income is almost the same as that found in recently Fani et al (2020), it is, however, lower than the estimated of IFAD ( 2019) in a survey conducted in 2018 at the PADFA project completion report that showed that the average income of rice growers benefitting from the project had risen by 70 percent, while some actors have earned over FCFA 10,000,000 (US$16393.44). In addition, in assessing rice production sustainability performance indicators and their gaps in twelve sub-Saharan African countries by Arouna et al (2021), the high profit per hectare was FCFA 435,878(US$662) in Cameroon for farmers, which is lower than the amount revealed by these findings.…”

“…Therefore, wholesalers and retailers could compensate for a smaller value share by increasing their efficiency in rice storage or further packaging into small units for consumers to buy or by handling larger volumes of rice. Such activities are made difficult, as both wholesalers and retailers face particular challenges in the chain due to the increasing level of import of rice (Luis et al, 2018), lesser business operations as a result of the ongoing crisis, and higher informal taxes these actor incur which is often not accounted for, according to Fani et al (2020). The discrepancy at that level of value share may be a reason for well-informed innovations that may produce progressive results for the whole chain.…”

“…Piebiep (2008) found out that around FCFA 138 billion (US$ 226.2 million) were devoted by households in Cameroon to purchasing rice in 2007, against about 200,000 tons imported in the same year (MINADER, 2009). This amount increased to FCFA 183 billion (US$ 300 million) a decade later (Luis et al, 2018;Fani et al, 2020), against 367,000 tons of rice imported (Mbemngong et al, 2022).…”

“…According to Dossou-Yovo et al (2020), rice yield per unit land area is declining in Ngoketunjia. The traditional production system remains with limited adoption of innovations, the current marketing system does not benefit actors, and the Ngoketunjia rice remains largely unknown in the country (IFAD, 2019;Dossou-Yovo et al, 2020;Fani et al, 2020;Tumenta et al, 2021). This study investigated the nature of the rice value chain and actors' performance along the chain in the Ngoketunjia division of the north-west of Cameroon.…”