Food and Agriculture

Agriculture is the mainstay of Cameroon’s economy, engaging an estimated 70 percent of the economically active population and accounting for an estimated 80 percent of the primary sector’s contribution to the country’s GDP. It also provides 1/3 of foreign exchange earnings and 15 percent of the country’s budgetary resources. Despite this enormous potential, agriculture in Cameroon faces a plethora of challenges, thus compromising the country’s capacity to sufficiently nourish its expanding food needs.

The 2005 Rural Sector Development Strategy was adopted with the objective of meeting some of these challenges so as to guarantee food security and self-sufficiency for households, contribute to economic growth, foreign exchange earnings and employment, increase the incomes of rural producers—thus improving their living conditions—and to ensure better use and sustainable management of natural capital as a production base.


WWF’s Vision on food and Agriculture

• Food systems that capitalize on Africa’s agricultural potential, but preserve the core ecosystem functions (natural capital) are needed for long-term sustainability and climate resilience, ensuring the long-term food security and livelihoods and economic opportunities for people.
• This vision translates into the global food practice goal where agriculture and aquaculture production are managed sustainably to ensure biodiversity conservation, resilience to climate change and benefits to rural communities.

Our vision is thus intricately linked to the Sustainable Development Goals.

Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improve nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture; Goal 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all;
Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts;
Goal 15: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification and halt and reverse land degradation and biodiversity.
 
In Cameroon, WWF has in the last four years, through its regional palm oil programme focused on supporting the Government in developing a sustainable palm oil sector.

How WWF works:
We focus our efforts.
WWF focuses its efforts across the world toward achieving six major goals - in the areas of Forests, Oceans, Wildlife, Food, Climate & Energy, and Water.
 
We tackle the causes.
In order to achieve large-scale, long-lasting impacts, we aim to tackle the underlying causes to environmental degradation. WWF focuses on three drivers that fuel environmental problems – Markets, Finance and Governance.
 
We capitalize on our expertise.
WWF's work is powered by a dedicated Network of professionals operating in over 100 countries–including leading conservation scientists, policy experts, economists, lawyers, and communications experts–who work with each other and with partners at all levels to achieve WWF's goals.
 
We build strong partnerships.
One organization alone can’t effect the change needed. WWF works with many actors, locally and globally, to achieve these ambitions. These include local communities, multinational corporations, governments, NGOs, finance institutions, development agencies, consumers, and researchers.