Producers lobby FAO for status

When the visiting Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, José Graziano da Silva, met with civil society organisations and representatives of producer organisations at the Yaounde Hilton Hotel on September 4, 2015, his first concern was to understand their vision. The question met with a plethora of worries.

The civil society organisations told the visiting FAO boss that their role in food security was based on advocacy for better standards. Speakers at the meeting said they have been lobbying for the past four years for a legal framework for producers, yet it was seemingly difficult.

The President of the Chamber of Agriculture, Livestock and Animal Industry, Mongui Sossomba, told José Graziano da Silva that they have been working with producers for so long and it was high time Cameroonian farmers, like their peers elsewhere in the world, benefitted from visibility which could only be gotten through the putting in place of a legal framework.

Mongui Sossomba also proposed a programme whereby integrated food chains can be put in place on the Meiganga-Yokadouma corridor in the East Region right across to the Central African Republic as well as to Chad to boost agriculture and livestock activities. Training is fundamental to developing agriculture and participants at the meeting believe that farmers can get better information through community radios.

The Director General of the FAO told stakeholders that he was impressed at their thinking. He promised to get on board the vision to train farmers. “We could find a way to discuss agricultural governance in Cameroon,” the FAO boss said while responding to concerns over the unavailability of a particular price tag to staple crops in what producers refer to as the “fixing of prices of staple food according to client” syndrome. José Graziano da Silva however, noted that improved seeds were one of the biggest problems Cameroon and Africa were facing.

He stressed that Africa needed to recover its old (best) seeds that are facing extinction. Selecting local seeds that could be used to improve yields using simple procedures was indispensable. Genetically-modified Seeds are good, but local seeds are better. They can increase production. FAO specialists could be useful in this. ] In all, José Graziano da Silva promised civil society organisations championing the cause of food security in Cameroon and agriculture and livestock producers that “We will get back to you.”