Abstract

Food security is a major global issue with over a billion people believed to lack sufficient dietary energy access while others suffer from micronutrient deficiencies. This project was aimed to evaluation of the Impact of Crisis on Agricultural Productivity and Food Security in South West Region of Cameroon: Case Study of Anglophone Crisis in Buea. Crisis has affected agricultural productivity and hence exposing the population of Buea to food insecurity.

The study took place for two months from October 2021 to November 2021. Over 50 respondents in two markets of Buea community, Cameroon were interviewed and ghost towns, gunshots, fear, and seasonal changes (variation), were strong factors affecting farmers hence exposing them to food insecurity.

It was a community-based cross-sectional study among farmers in the Buea community. It employed a convenient sampling technique with the administration of a semi-structured questionnaire to those who gave consent. Data was analyzed and presented on tables.

Therefore, it can be concluded that there is food insecurity in Buea as a result of the crisis. Massive sensitization of the public and communities on the alternative ways of farming in gardens in front of compound to reduce the risk of increasing food insecurity.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

In the Northwest and Southwest Regions, where as much as 70 per cent of the population is involved in agriculture, ordinary people are now facing crop failure, food insecurity and job losses thanks to a conflict that started in October 2016.

Cameroon’s economy mainly relies on agriculture. Agricultural activities continue to be severely affected, particularly in the South West region, by civil unrest. In the North-West and SouthWest regions, where 70 percent of the population relies on agriculture for their livelihoods, increased violence among armed groups and government forces has displaced about 438 000 people.

This has caused a decrease in agricultural production as well as rising prices of basic food commodities such as of maize and haricot beans. Insecurity has also restricted population movements and limited access to markets, which will lead to the depletion of stocks and increase the population’s vulnerability to acute food insecurity.

The attainment of global food security is described as a situation in which all people and at all times, have access to adequate, affordable, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary requirements and food preferences for a productive and healthy life (World Bank, 2011; Pinstrup Andersen, 2009:5).

For many developing countries such as Cameroon, food security is commonly conceptualized as resting on three pillars; food availability, accessibility and utilization (Barrett, 2002). While food availability refers to             the physical presence of food  where it is needed, food accessibility is the means by which people acquire the food they need and food utilization refers to the way in which people make use of food (Barrett, 2002; Pinstrup Andersen, 2009: 5).

These three pillars function in a nested hierarchical way and are greatly intertwined. For instance, adequate food availability is necessary but it does not ensure universal access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food since it is mostly related to social science concepts of the range of individual food choices, income, prevailing prices and access via safety net arrangements (Fogel, 2004; FAO, 2006).

Thus access reflects the demand side of food security, as manifest in uneven inter and intra-household food distribution and in the sociocultural limits on what foods are consistent with prevailing tastes and values within a community.

Therefore, the relationship between food security, poverty, socioeconomic and political disenfranchisement is clearly discernable through access (Devereaux, 2009; Barret et al., 2010).

Crops such as maize, rice, cassava and macabo/taro are produced throughout the entire country; the production of potato is negligible in the Eastern part of the country, whilst that of yam is negligible in the Far North.

The crisis in the two Anglophone regions has also affected farmers. Over 1 million people have been displaced, forcing farmers to abandon their fields and livelihoods, increasing pressure on vulnerable host communities’ already limited natural resources.

In the Northwest and Southwest regions, where agricultural production was lower than average for four consecutive years due to ongoing socio-political conflicts, this year’s harvests are running out earlier than usual.

Due to lower than average harvests in July 2020, poor households in the regions most affected by the conflict are already nearly out of stored food. This places them in a Crisis (IPC Phase 3) food situation earlier than usual. Agricultural revenue remains lower than average, despite sales of grains and cash crops such as coffee and cacao.

Muyenge Trouble, a mainly agrarian village with a once dynamic farming population on the leeward side of Mount Cameroon, is one of the many communities ensnared by the violence that has swept through Cameroon’s English-speaking regions since 2017. Tassa Tassa Paulinus used to live there.

But the life of this middle-aged plantain farmer has been turned upside down ever since he was forced to flee his home in November with his five-year-old daughter, trekking through dangerous bush paths to the relative safety of Muyuka, a town over 30 kilometres away.

“I could no longer live in Muyenge as it had become a veritable ‘red zone’. The Amba Boys [armed separatists] of the Ambazonia Defence Forces made life very difficult. They kept demanding money from me,” Tassa explains.

The farmer says he could have paid them for ‘protection’ if he had been able to sell his produce. But since the fighting between government forces and militant separatists began, the traders who used to frequent Muyenge Trouble have stayed away; they want to avoid running into lethal clashes and they don’t want to negotiate their way through the checkpoints mounted by rebel fighters in the area.

“At one point in time, I harvested over 400 bunches of plantain from my farm, but no buyers came. They all got rotten. A week later, the Amba Boys came for more money. I had to leave,” says Tassa, who has not seen his wife since she was kidnapped by the Amba Boys last September.

Away from Muyuka, which is 27 kilometres away from Buea (the capital of the Southwest Region, which, along with the Northwest Region, is where the so-called ‘Anglophone crisis’ is taking place), Martin Ekoke Sona is another farmer who has seen his dreams go up in smoke due to the conflict.

The 30-year-old had been planning to set up a large yam plantation. “I had planned to cultivate yam on a large scale. But just before the farmland was due to be cleared, a school in the area was razed to the ground in an arson attack. That forced me to abort the project,” recalls Sona, who lost about half a million CFA francs (US$862) in the process.

At the time, Sona had just completed a six-month intensive entrepreneurship programme sponsored by the African Union’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and other partners. He feels frustrated that he hasn’t been able to utilise his new-found skills due to the conflict. “I now do yam seed multiplication, and I can barely produce 300 seeds in six months. If we were in peacetime, I could produce 1,000 or more yam seeds over the same period.”

1.2. Problem statement 

Food security is presently being undermined by a number of challenges such as rapidly growing demand and changes in consumption patterns, competition for agricultural lands for other uses, the effects of global environmental change, serious degradation of agricultural soil, erosion of the genetic base of agricultural biodiversity, water scarcity and poor governance (Goomes and Petrassi, 1996; Batisani and Yarnal, 2010; Yengoh et al., 2010).

The 2007–2008 world food crisis (including in Cameroon), tested the resilience of the global food system and revealed deficiencies in its capacity to efficiently adjust to and absorb shocks that show many signs of growing in the future (Yengoh et al., 2010; FAO, 2011b; FAO, 2012sss).

1.3. Justification of Study

Therefore this study will go a long way in reducing the risk of food insecurity by advising farmers on other safer methods of increasing food production in the midst of conflicts and climate change crisis.

1.4. Objectives

1. To evaluate the Effects of Climate On Food Security
2. To evaluate the Effects of Arm Conflict On Food Security

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