Cameroon’s Cotton Farms Closing on Rising Input Costs

By Pius Lukong
April 14 (Bloomberg) -- Cotton farmers in Cameroon are being forced out of business by rising input costs, according to Iya Mohammed, general manager of Sodecoton, the state-owned cotton company.
A 40 percent rise in the cost of fertilizer during the past three years has resulted in the number of cotton producers falling by about 35 percent, he said by phone from Garoua, in northern Cameroon, on April 11. Production this year is therefore expected to fall to about 150,000 metric tons, half the quantity that was produced in 2007, he said.
Cotton, mostly grown by about 227,500 small-scale farmers in the north of the country, is Cameroon’s fifth-largest foreign exchange earner.
Subsidies to producers in richer nations have depressed global prices, threatening the livelihood of millions of people in developing countries, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Sodecoton is 59 percent-owned by the government, while the rest is held by the Compagnie Francaise de Developement du Textile.

                               喀麥隆棉花農場被迫關閉
      4月14日（彭博） -由于投入成本增加，喀麥隆的棉農們被迫關閉工廠，喀麥隆棉花開發公司(Sodecoton) 是一家棉花國有企業，該公司總經理穆罕默德在接受采訪時說。
      在過去的三年中，肥料成本已經增加40%，導致棉花生產者數量下降了35%，他于4月11日在加魯阿，喀麥隆北部地區接受電話采訪時說。因此今年的產量預計將下降約15萬噸，其中一半的產量是2007年生產的，他說。
      棉花，主要是該國北部約22.75萬小規模經營的農民種植，是喀麥隆第五大外匯收入來源。
      根據國際貨幣基金的報告，富裕國家的生產補貼金壓低了價格，威脅發展中國家億萬人民的生計。
      Sodecoton有59%的股份屬于政府擁有，余下的股份則屬于法國紡織發展集團。