Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2015 in the subject Business
economics - Trade and Distribution, grade: 3.6/5, language: English,
abstract: This study has identified the main actors in the Ndop rice
value chain in Cameroon, beginning with the cost of production at the
farmer's level, then the costs or added values at each stage identified
along the value chain. It has been shown that farmers incur a production
cost of 114,6 Francs per kilogram of paddy rice, which they sell at 120
Francs to millers. In the process along the value chain it is shown that
the millers make the highest profit. UNDVA gets the lion's share
(154909,96 Francs) followed by the private miller (105504 Francs) per
hectare, while the farmers gets only 27,200 Francs. Further analyses
show that the farmer could improve his profit margin by 78,304 Francs if
he mills his rice with the private millers and sells to a wholesaler and
by 127,709 Francs a if he mills with UNDVA, if he was not financially
handicapped and /or restrained from pursuing such an option. Also, the
farmer's profit situation is sometimes worsened by local rice collectors
when because of financial constraints he is lured into unfair production
pre-financing deals involving taking loans from middlemen to repay in
kind at harvest time and at giveaway rates. On other hand, millers
further increase their lion's share of the profit from the sales of rice
brand, a byproduct of milled rice, which is never handed to the farmer.
Value chain analysis revealed the following weaknesses along the chain:
the activities of the actors are as yet uncoordinated; income
distribution is unequal and disfavors the farmers; returns to the
farmers, who the principal actors, are discouragingly very low and due
mainly to high cost of the labour intensive activities, unattractively
low producer price(less than a third of the consumer price, and to
financial constraints that hinder him from extending his production
activities to include millin
