The Small Farmer Infrastructural Incentive Imbroglio in Rural Cameroon

Infrastructural incentives constitute a primordial agricultural booster to small farmers in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) though many development agencies acclaim tenure security as the main driver for agricultural investment. In SSA where the bulk of the farmers are smallholders in inaccessible rural areas, basic small-scale on-farm and off-farm infrastructural incentives remain critical within the productivity, production and market chain derivatives. This study relied on conceptual insights from different scholars, oral histories captured through interviews, informants conversations, focus group discussions and field observations to investigate and analyze the correlation between on-farm and off-farm infrastructural incentives and better rural livelihoods achievements through smallholder productivity, production and improved food chain marketing systems. The study was carried out in two and three rural communities in the North West and Centre Regions of Cameroon respectively. Results show that small farmers generally lack on-farm water infrastructures for irrigation and spraying of crops, and those that exist were improvised and were often cost and course ineffective. Water stresses were observed to accentuate with climate change, impacting negatively on crop productivity and production. Storage facilities were also improvised and no post-harvest washing and cooling infrastructures for fruits and vegetables were available. Findings equally show that off-farm infrastructures such as roads and transport were a major challenge to farm produce evacuation and ensuring fluidity in market chains. The study has proposed pathways for investing in basic small-scale on-farm and off-farm infrastructural incentives in rural Cameroon in order to address salient issues of smallholders ranging from improved productivity and production for quantitative and qualitative household food security to poverty reduction. Keywords: Infrastructural incentives, off-farm infrastructure, on-farm infrastructure, food security, poverty reduction, small-scale farmers, Cameroon