Cassava sector development in Cameroon Production and marketing factors affecting price英文文献资料.docVIP

Vol.3, No.5, 651-657 (2012) Agricultural Sciences /10.4236/as.2012.35078 Cassava sector development in Cameroon: Production and marketing factors affecting price Elise Stephanie Meyo Mvodo , Dapeng Liang * Business Administration, School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China; Corresponding Author: mvodostephanie@ * Received 12 July 2012; revised 18 August 2012; accepted 6 September 2012 ABSTRACT tree. He also took part in community farms and nation- building initiatives. The woman was in-charge of chil- dren’s education and housekeeping. She has to provide food, placing herself at the bottom line of the family diet manager. Women cultivated crops and exotic herbs for cooking and medicinal purposes; those crops that were considered as complementary with lesser economic im- portance were peanut, cassava, taro, yam, cocoyam, on- ions among others [1,2]. Women sold handful of those products on seasonal and weekly community markets for extra money usually without business objectives. The mid 80s crisis, The Breton wood institutions structural adjustments in early 90s and the country’s currency de- valuation in mid 90s made cash crop prices unpredictable and the government ceased to provide financial aids to farmers [3]. Many rural-farming households faced criti- cal financial down sloping and many coffee and cocoa farms were abandoned [4]. In addition, the increasing number of women in the intellectual arena, some with high-institutional positions (decision makers) and women empowerment initiatives contributed to the raising of a self-determined and powerful generation of women, with the quest of using what they have in order to upgrade their family’s living conditions. All these created market opportunities for many food crops, among which cassava holds an upright place, moving from a family food crop to a high financial return crop. Today, cassava