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Moderated e-mail conference on small farms and food security

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Sender: "Moderated conference on small farms and food security (October 2016)" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2016 12:45:44 +0000
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My name is Nkwah Azinwi Ngum. I am an Msc holder in environmental economics, rural development and agrifood from the University of Yaounde II, Cameroon. I am a Commonwealth respondent  and freelance community worker with focus on issues of rural women and business development manager at Union Farms of Africa.



I have been working with the rural communities for over three years and over this time I carried out a research to see if small farms which are mostly cultivated by women contribute to the food security needs (dimensions) of the household or community.



Food security, as we all know, is made of four principal dimensions, that is availability, accessibility, utilization and stability.



In Cameroon, where close to 8 million of its approximately 22 million population is rural and made of about 60.000 small farms, their contributions to food security are enormous.



1. Availability: Many of the high value nutritive food crops like pulses, fruits and vegetable that are labour intensive are mostly cultivated by small farm owners. This indicates that small farms are able to produce food crops that can contribute to food security. 



2. Accessibility: Because small farms are labour intensive, they employ a majority of the rural population and incomes are strengthened when small farms expand their activities to integrate production and processing. For example, farmers of cassava in the South West region have been able to increase their income from the processing of cassava into starch and cassava flour which they can sell in the local market to make extra money to cater for the household. 



3. Utilization: small farms have the ability to diversify their production to meet the food needs for the household and community. For example, a small farm with just 1 hectare of land will prefer to divide its land to cultivate 2 or 3 different food crops such that the food need of their family can be ensured. This ability of small farms is further strengthened by some training like the farmers business school to enhance food security.



Small farms therefore play a vital role in improving the dietary patterns both of the rural and urban population though they are consistently being limited by poor infrastructure like road network.



4. Stability: Price fluctuations and climate change are major factors that affect the stability component of food security, however small farms have been able to manage these situations. They can preserve a share of their harvest to feed the family in case of these situations. During the 2008 food riots in Cameroon, the rural community which are the custodians of small farms were relatively not affected. 

 

Nkwah Azinwi Ngum

MSc Environmental Economics, Rural development and agrifood, University of Yaounde II

Union Farms of Africa

Bomaka Buea

Cameroon

www.unionfarmsofafrica.com

+237 675154340

Email: ngumazinwi (at) yahoo.com



[To contribute to this conference, send your message to [log in to unmask] For further information, see http://www.fao.org/nr/research-extension-systems/res-home/news/detail/en/c/434322/ ].



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