The Lokoundje-Nyong oil palm project in Cameroon: Report on a mission from March 20th to 26th

Summary: The Lokoundje-Nyong project aims at creating a new oil palm agribusiness complex 12 km east of Fifinda, which is 74 km south of Edea, along Edea-Kribi road. This area has been identified suitable for oil palm cultivation as early as in 1963 and various projects have been successively planned in 1992, 1995 and 2000 without any start of implementation. On November 1st, 2012 the decree n° 2012/3509 degazetted a 21,552 ha forest concession which was part of a bigger domain of 125,568 ha belonging to the private domain of the State, the Lokoundje-Nyong forest, and attributed it to Biopalm. The LN forest is a production forest registered under UFA 00-003 and a logging permit for its exploitation has been issued to MMG in July 2000 following a bidding process. But the forest has been regularly logged since 1958 and previous loggers (legal and illegal) have harvested the main species of commercial value, so that the present operator can only remove one or two species common on the market. LN forest is undergoing a change in its species composition and it will never recover the state of a pristine forest, except when closed to any further exploitation for a century or more. Human activities include collection of NTFP and hunting by surrounding populations. But animals become rare and distances to meet game increase. Hunting has been banned in the northern part of the forest. The overall economic output of the forest is far below that of a plantation (about 100 times), but national interest in converting 17% of the area of the LN forest to oil palm is not only financial. The country has got short of edible oils and fats, and the situation is getting worse over years. Current deficit is about 40,000 tons and is increasing by 3,250 tons a year. Climate and soil conditions indicate that an average yield close to 22 t FFB/ha could be attained if plantation development is restricted to the most suitable soils, over 60% of the concession. Assuming 24% OER, a 10,000 ha palm plantation will yield 52,800 t CPO a year by 2025. This will not be enough to compensate the whole deficit at that time, but it will greatly reduce it and contribute to alleviate the country's dependence on south-east Asian imports of oils and fats. (Résumé d'auteur)