BUEA, CAMEROON, AFRICA. NOVEMBER 2010 (http://news.cameroon-today.com)  -  Cameroon decides to use renewable sources of energy to dry cocoa.
 

It is getting to be quite a common sight in Cameroon wherein farmers can be seen drying cocoa in conventional ovens made of timber. Cultivators of cocoa who reside mostly in the Southwest parts of the country have been complaining for ages because their crops haven’t produced good yields owing to continuous heavy rains in the region. The plan from the government to dry the beans using sources of renewable energy comes as a great relief to these poor farmers.

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The aggressive attacks of monsoons have only grown worse in the south western provinces of Cameroon in the past three years. The yields from cocoa plants which mostly thrive in these regions have henceforth been at their lowest ever in ages over these past couple of years. The continuous rains have resulted in adversely affecting the process of drying of these cocoa beans which have had to be slowed down owing to non stop monsoons. This in turn has negatively affected the quality as well as quantity of cocoa produce in the region as officials of the National Cocoa and Coffee Board (NCCB) state.

The farmers have been the worst hit in this region because they are unable to get any money selling their produce which owing to the reduced quality has to be sold at throw away prices. The price of cocoa in the country has been at its lowest ever thereby reducing farmers incomes heavily said Michael Ndoping, director general of the board.

Cameroon is the fifth largest cocoa yielding country in the world and the Southwest region, which is generally a monsoon prone territory where it rains for approximately nine to ten months in a year is where almost three fourths of the cocoa comes from. But the rains which have been going from bad to worse this year and does not seem to be stopping even for a moment has been increasing the water content in the cocoa plants by over 15 percent.

This makes drying of cocoa beans a real tedious and close to impossible process since this amount is significantly higher than the 8 percent which is the stipulated requirement as per international standards.

“The heavy and prolonged rains means there’s little sunshine and the cocoa beans take much longer to get dry. The farmers are thus obliged to use locally made firewood ovens built with mud bricks which most often burn the beans because of overheat, thus leading to low quality products,” Ndoping said.

SOLAR AND BIOGAS DRYING OF CAMEROON COCOA

Cameroon, Africa

The solution to this problem that has been aptly conceived by the government of Cameroon will come not just as a relief to the farmers but will also be a long lasting and sustainable one. The government has proposed that a process to dry the cocoa beans using renewable and green sources of energy like solar power or bio gas be used.

Thus revolutionary concept will be supported by the government in tandem with the Women for Green Growth (WGG), a civil society association that functions locally, that target at developing and deploying a drying technique for cocoa that is both energy efficient as well as sustainable using renewable sources of energy according to Cameroon’s minister of trade, Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana.

The unique concept will deploy renewable solar energy to dry the beans at a slow paced rate thereby making this a cost effective solution as well. The biogas will be used in addition to the solar energy to supplement the drying process said Martha Molinge, a WGG member.

Biogas energy has been deployed with success in many projects all across Africa especially in some countries like Mali, where it is being used to support a major share of the energy requirements of the whole country.

“The technology is going to boost the incomes of cocoa farmers not only in Cameroon but all over the globe where cocoa is produced, especially in Africa,” Molinge predicted.

She said she was especially glad that the idea had been provided from an organization that is essentially composed of women, and said that she was hopeful that such a venture would encourage more and more ladies to actively participate in an activity that is mostly dominated by men.

The latest venture has proven to be capable of finding the answer to the numerous issues pertaining to environment degradation and agro-processing at a single go, Molinge said. She said that they were shocked to find that conventionally, millions of tons of cocoa are dried using firewood, wherein three to five tons of firewood are burned off without hesitation to dry just a single ton of cocoa as a research conducted by the WCG revealed.

CURBING DEFORESTATION IN CAMEROON, AFRICA

The aggressive use of firewood for burning is a sad but true fact behind destruction of forests but one thing that many countries choose to conveniently overlook. This is especially true in parts of Central and West Africa where people choose to burn wood for drying cocoa. This is turn has resulted in an increase in deforestation in those areas and their vicinities which are the primary areas where cocoa is being grown. The latest initiative will hopefully see a sharp decline in the use of firewood which in turn will reduce environmental pollution due to the smoke as well as curb deforestation.

The technology is simple and can be used beyond the boundaries of Cameroon. Ivory Coast, Ghana and Nigeria, other major cocoa producers, have also been witnessing a sharp fall in the t quality and quantity of cocoa owing to the bad and long stint of heavy rains, as per the findings if a research conducted by Cameroon’s ministry of agriculture.

In Cameroon, cocoa exports for the 2009-2010 year, through August, plummeted to 162 tons from 169 tons in the same period last year.

Cocoa prices have increased sharply in the international market in the past couple of years, but farmers require to dry their beans to get the maximum advantage of whatever crop they sow, agricultural officials said. In Cameroon, the price of a kilo of dried cocoa is three times of what it used to be three years ago.

However the problems if the farmers don’t end here. It is extremely difficult to get across even properly dried cocoa till the port of Douala owing to poor and dirty roads which are soaked in rain and impossible to be traversed.

“The heavy rains have rendered the state of the mostly earth roads impassible, with trucks taking over four days to get to the warehouse in Douala,” said Charles Makoge, a farmer residing in Tombel, in the country’s Southwest province, and head of the Tombel Farmers’ Cooperative Union.

During the course of travel, dried cocoa beans often end up being totally drenched and have to be dried all over again so that they are ready to match the international standards which are compulsory for sale in global markets. The cost of drying the beans again and again becomes an added burden for the producer and eats into his income resulting in reducing it, Makoge said.

Studying the situation carefully, Cameroon’s National Cocoa and Coffee Board has come into the picture stating that as an intermediate measure towards improving the sale of cocoa in the global markets they would build 20,000 modern wood-fired drying ovens in Southwest province.

These ovens, which use latest technology will typically require lesser quantity of firewood to produce the same amount of heat and will provide temporary relief to the farmers till they can conjure up the latest cost effective and energy saving technology of using renewable sources of energy to dry the soaked beans. The wood ovens will also meet the regulations that will prevent it from over firing the beans.

Ndoping said about 5,000 farmers have completed the necessary training in sustainable operations of the new ovens and are all equipped to handle the same.
But for the condition of the farmers to actually improve and take a turn for the better the government will also need to do something to improve the condition of the roads for which even they cannot be blamed for because the non stop continuous heavy rains makes road repairs impossible. Should the roads be repaired at all the rains will eventually bring them back into the same condition within just days of completing the maintenance and repair.

Cocoa exports have always been a major source of revenue for the country and hence it is important to do whatever is necessary to address the concerns of the cocoa farmers who are fast approaching poverty due to poor crop, and difficulty in drying the beans owing to heavy rains, lack of availability of firewood and poor sustainability of using firewood to dry the beans.

The new measure to go in for renewable sources of energy to dry the beans like solar energy and biogas as a supplement is precisely what is needed to address their concerns about drying the beans at the moment because the solution is a cost effective and easy to adopt one.