South West : Rubber Farmers Decry Forest Expansion Restriction

The restriction on forest expansion by the European Union for the cultivation of coffee and rubber has not gone down well with rubber farmers in Meme and Fako Division of the South West Region. An official from Hevecam advised the farmers in Buea on Friday March 22, 2024, that they should stop cutting down the forest to plant rubber. That rubber harvested from the new farms planted after 2021 will not be bought anymore. The rubber will only be bought from old farms. 
The farmers raised the issue of the rubber price in Cameroon which has remained stagnant for the past 30 years. A kilogram of rubber is sold at FCFA 280. The farmers said rubber is sold at the world market at FCFA 1,900. They are requesting that the State intervenes to raise rubber prices to at least FCFA 1,000. “They cannot only be bothered about us falling of trees to expand our production. They should also be bothered on why the prices of rubber are not going up as well. Rubber farmers are poor and the reason why we are poor is because we have never enjoyed good prices in rubber,” Barrister Ngwese Joseph Ndille, a rubber holder farmer in Muyuka said. 
South West has a huge basin of small holder...