Cocoa Production is Expected to Exceed 300,000MT in 2023 with the Effective Implementation of the “Unique Farmers’ Desk”

Despite several cocoa sector support programs implemented by the Cameroon government, the national production has not reached 300,000 MT per season. This time, government authorities have adopted the digitized unique farmers’ desk which will be different hopefully as it restricts the number of intermediaries between farmers and the funds.

With a magnetic card, a cocoa farmer who has been granted a subsidy can go directly to pre-selected agro-chemicals distributors and receive his farm input simply by introducing their card in a kind of “Automatic telling machine” set up by the program. It is worth mentioning that in Cameroon, cocoa pesticides whose prices are not correlated to cocoa prices represent the highest cost in cocoa farm handling. With such timely support, farmers will be more able to fight fungus attacks which used to take away close to 30% of their farm production.

In these circumstances, national cocoa production is expected to exceed the threshold of 300,000MT for 2022/23 season with the aim of reaching the government goal of 600,000 MT by 2030. Cocoa traders can therefore start preparing because the sourcing competition will be as tough as usual.