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Are the Cocoa Agroforests of Southern Cameroon a High Carbon Pathway to Development?

Are the Cocoa Agroforests of Southern Cameroon a High Carbon Pathway to Development?. By James Gockowski Sustainable Tree Crops Program. World Congress of Agroforestry 2009, Nairobi, Kenya August 25, 2009. Introduction to the problem.

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Are the Cocoa Agroforests of Southern Cameroon a High Carbon Pathway to Development?

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  1. Are the Cocoa Agroforests of Southern Cameroon a High Carbon Pathway to Development? By James Gockowski Sustainable Tree Crops Program World Congress of Agroforestry 2009, Nairobi, Kenya August 25, 2009

  2. Introduction to the problem Original Climax Ecosystems and Cultivation-Forest Mosaic in WCA Cultivation-Forest Mosaic Dominated by Cocoa Cropping System Rural Poverty (%) Cote D’Ivoire no data Nigeria 37% Ghana 50% Cameroon 50% Annual Closed Deforestation canopy forest Cocoa (%) (million ha) (million ha) Cote D’Ivoire 3.5% 2.4 2.5-3.0 Nigeria 2.5% 2.6 0.5-1.0Ghana 1.7% 1.8 1.5-2.0Cameroon 0.89% 19.5 0.2-0.4 Source: World Bank, World Resources Institute, FAOSTAT

  3. Main Research Questions • To what extent do extant cocoa agroforests offer a viable pathway out of chronic poverty? • What role for research?

  4. Land use legend cocoa mixed food crop mixed food last season fallow 300 m Importance of CAFs in the provision of environmental services • Depends on their extent in the landscape: • Cocoa lands accounted for 684 km, 439 and 624 sq. km (equivalent to 23, 9 and 4 percent of total land area) in the Lékié, Mfou and Mvila divisions • Santoir (1995) has shown that in some specific localities of the intensified Lékié CAF area cover>30% of total area.

  5. Findings: Non-Timber Product Inventory 254 plant species from 78 different families w/ some consumptive value. Type of use values: • 93 species with food value, • 186 species with medicinal value and • 103 species used for other purposes (food wrapping, poles for construction, caterpillar trees, etc.) Plant type: • 165 tree species • 13 woody shrubs, • 30 vines and • 46 herbaceous plants Most represented botanical families: • Euphorbiaceae--16 species • Sterculiaceae--12 species and • Apocynaceae, Caesalpiniaceae and Moraceae--11 species each

  6. Food Uses Dacryodes edulis (G. Don) H.J. Lam 100% Persea americana Mill. 96% Mangifera indica L. 93% Costus afer Ker Gawl. 93% D. edulis, African plum Pycnanthus angolensis (Welw.) Warb. 87% Oil palm Elaeis guineensis Ficus exasperata Vahl 83% Terminalia superba Engl. & Diels 78% Myrianthus arboreus P. Beauv. 76% Elaeis guineensis Jacq. 74% Ricinodendron heudelotii (Baill.) Heckel 74% Presence(% of CAFs) Most Frequent Food Species

  7. Biodiversity and Fruit Tree Density

  8. Fruit Tree Density and Market Access

  9. Commercialization • Market participation for non-timber products varied across sites. • 100% in the Lékié • 77% in the Mefou and • 53% in the Mvila sites • Timber revenues reported by 67% of households in Lékié sites versus 33% in the Mefou and 0% in the Mvila. • Women were most frequently responsible for the sale of non-cocoa products with the exceptions of palm wine and timber • Non-cocoa revenues were most often controlled by women (57% of households)

  10. Findings: Gross Margin per ha

  11. Per capita revenue distribution • Per capita CAF revenues were in excess of the poverty line for 46%, 25% and 15% of individuals living on cocoa farms in the Lékié, Mefou and Mvila sites, respectively. • The distribution is positively skewed with the highest quintile of the per capita revenue distribution accounting for 70% of total income (versus 2.3% for the lowest quintile). • Overall, CAF revenues increased and poverty decreased as agricultural intensification and market access increased along the Mvila-Mefou-Lékié gradient.

  12. A Comparison of Households from the Upper and Lower Quintiles of the Revenue Distribution

  13. Conclusions • Poverty reduction of systems depends on cocoa intensification and the commercialization of non-cocoa products. • Most important commercial associations were cocoa, oil palm, plum (Dacryodes), mango, and avocado • Maintains a substantial portion of forest services • Some decline in biodiversity occurred over the gradient of agricultural intensification.

  14. Recommendations for poverty alleviation via CAF development • Intensify the cocoa component of these systems by increasing farmer access to fungicides through provision of credit facilities. • Improve the efficiency and extent of non-cocoa commodity marketing by targeting women in: • The organization of collective marketing to achieve economies of scale and • The inclusion of CAF fruit prices in market information systems; • Incentives to expand the area cultivated by the poor. (More study of tree investment behavior may be needed to guide these efforts). • Research has completely neglected these systems (what are optimal densities

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