Rachel Olo (Married, 5 children) We have one hectare of land planted with cocoa. We manage to extract 800 Kgs of cocoa a year. We live well. With the money we have, we can send our children to school, repair our home or pay for care for the family. We also grow plantain. We both work, me and my husband. When we do not have enough time, we hire laborers to maintain the plot. Cocoa is a plant that needs a lot of maintenance. If the maintenance is good, the harvest will be good. The field we have comes from our grandparents. I've been producing cocoa for 27 years.
Of the production, I use 300 kilos to process into butter and cream. I earn more money with these products. For example, I can earn 5000fcfa with a box of butter while my husband will earn 1000fcfa with the same amount of cocoa. This year, I'm also thinking about making soap. We are making more money through processing than by selling our cocoa crops to cooperatives.
Photo by Ollivier Girard/CIFOR
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Keywords:
food security, food production, women, food crops, livelihoods, income, women health, CIFOR, nontimber forest products, crops, household expenditure, agroforestry systems, socioeconomics, females, foods, economics, food availability, community forestry, agroforestry, forestery, Cameroon, cocoa, household income.
