Farm Planning for Short-term Optimal Food Crop Combination in the Southwest Region of Cameroon

Francis Ebai Ndip^{1, 2,} , Ernest L. Molua^{1, 2}, Godlove Shu^{1, 2} and Marlene Francine Mbiafeu^{1, 2}

¹Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, Faculty of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, University of Buea, Cameroon, P.O. Box 63 Buea, Cameroon

²Centre for Independent Development Research, P.O. Box 58 Buea, SWR, Cameroon

Cite this paper

Francis Ebai Ndip, Ernest L. Molua, Godlove Shu and Marlene Francine Mbiafeu. Farm Planning for Short-term Optimal Food Crop Combination in the Southwest Region of Cameroon. Journal of Food Security. 2019; 7(3):72-79. doi: 10.12691/JFS-7-3-2

Abstract

Cameroon’s economy is on average agrarian. However, this subsector is plagued by a myriad of challenges with the most prominent one being that of misallocation of scarce resources. This study seeks to establish farm plans that will help food crop farmers efficiently allocate resources and maximise farm returns. Primary data was drawn from 60 farmers in Muyuka subdivision of the Southwest region of Cameroon. Six different food crop combinations were identified. Linear programming was used to formulate the farm problems with land, labour and capital being the constraints. The simplex algorithm, using the LINDO software was used to optimise the various combinations. In the various combinations only one was found to be the optimum combination. This combination includes maize and cassava enterprises. With this combination gross margin is optimized at 370,590 FCFA (US$ 617.65). This leads to an increase of 74,040 FCFA (US$ 123.4) from a non-optimal farm plan. Land and labour were found to be limiting constraints with shadow prices of 280,633 FCFA (US$ 467.7) and 468.5 FCFA (US$ 0.78) respectively. Capital on its part was binding with an associated unused capacity of 29,848.7 FCFA (US$ 49.7). It is recommended that farmers employ prudent method of resource allocation for optimal benefits.

Keywords

Cameroon, food crops, farm plan, optimum combination

Copyright

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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