Oil Palm Production - Demand Overshadows Supply

Absence of a national strategy, land use plan and low capacity of smallholders to blame.

Since recent years, the focus has been on developing the palm oil sector via improvement of palm oil production and expansion of areas of oil palm plantations. Smallholders own about 70 per cent of oil palm plantations against 30 per cent to agro-industry, but smallholders produce just about 30 per cent of national Fresh Branch Fruits.

Addressing the range of different challenges smallholders face requires input from many different actors. Government agencies, corporate and supply chains can assist smallholders in addressing these challenges, thereby supporting them to produce more sustainability. It is in this light that the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, CIRAD, CIFOR, ZSL and Proforest, organised a consultative workshop to improve collaborative partnership between agro-industries and smallholder schemes for the sustainable production of palm oil in Douala on February 13-14.

The objective was to build awareness and capacity of large-scale investors and smallholders and key relevant partners and stakeholders for their engagement in the way of strong partnerships as solution to sustainable palm oil production and yield improvement. The participants discussed how they can better establish a win-win partnership.

Cameroon suffers an annual palm oil deficit of over 35,000 tonnes in 2013. Annual crude oil production, however, rose to 265,000 tonnes in 2013, compared with 210,000 tonnes in 2010, registering an increase of 55,000 tonnes in three years-a production that does not meet domestic demand. The interest in this sector can be attributed to the increasing production deficit to meet the national demand in palm oil as well as the increasing global demand at the expense of other vegetable oils, due to its importance, availability and low cost. This is attributed to non-performing seedlings, ageing of plantations (30-40 years), insufficient fertilising, theft and corruption, etc, thereby obliging importation of palm oil from other nations, according to Durrel Halleson, Policy Officer for the WWF. Cameroon occupies the 13th position in palm oil production in the world, far behind Indonesia and Malaysia.