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For long Cameroon has been considered a country that is self sufficient in its food needs. Climatic and soil conditions are favorable for abundant agricultural yields, but the focus on the production of export commodities has rendered the sector vulnerable to world market prices that plummeted in the 1990's. At the same time structural ajustment programs, imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to regulate the national budget exacerbated the difficulties for farmers, as agricultural subsidies were cut or completely annulled. The measures have for example quadrupled the price for agricultural inputs like fertilizer and peticides.
More recently, Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA's)* threaten to further undermine the livelihoods of local producers. On the one side they cannot compete with the imported EU products that are often cheaper because of State subsidies their European competitors receive. The Cameroonian poultry sector, for example, became nearly extinct as the producers had to cede their market to cheaper, imported frozen chicken parts from Europe. A succesful Civil Society campaign that pushed the government to halt these imports reversed that trend. The EPA's also lower the barriers for European agricultural companies to encroach on Cameroonian soil for the production of export commodities.
Closer to home, farmers affiliated RELUFA have sustained devastating losses to a foreign banana export company affiliated with La Fruitiere/Dole Foods Inc. For its Trade Justice program the network tunes therefore into the international banana trade to illustrate the impact of Economic Trade Agreements on small producers.
On the other side, within the network there is a wealth of experiences through a solid Fair Trade partnership between member organization Terrespoir and Swiss churches. And so, with its Trade Justice program RELUFA seeks to link on one side educational and advocacy activities about the impact of globalization on small producers with the trade of an alternative product for customers in the US and the EU on the other side.
The network works with victimized farmers to offer consumers fairly produced dried fruit, which is currently marketed in the US through Partners for Just Trade. This Fair Fruit project is still being developed to eventually obtain certification from the Fair Trade Labeling Organization (FLO).
* EPA's are a scheme to create a free trade area (FTA) between the European Commission of the European Union and 46 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries ACP's)
that are signatories of the Lomé Convention. They are a response to continuing criticism that the non-reciprocal and discriminating preferential trade agreements offered by the EU are incompatible with WTO rules. The EPAs are a key element of the Cotonou Agreement, the latest agreement in the history of ACP-EU Development Cooperation and are to take effect as of 2008.[wikipedia] |
