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1 Chapter one The Theoretical Framework Introduction Rural refers to the countryside as opposed to the urban area. The rural population in popular use means the people living in the countryside as opposed to the people living in urban areas or towns. It can also imply the people living in an administrative unit of a certain defined size or population, according to the country. One can therefore talk of rural districts or rural councils. Many countries are increasingly shifting their efforts towards developing rural areas. In most developing countries, rural districts are depressed regions. There is an urgent need to relieve the situation in these depressed regions, to offset migratory pressure on urban centres and to accelerate the transition from subsistence agriculture to market-oriented agriculture. In most rural areas of the country the productivity of the land and the capacity to sustain a given population density in existing rural areas are hampered by the shortage of cultivable land, the lack of infrastructure such as irrigation, access roads, and other production factors. Figure 1 presents projections of available cultivable land in Cameroon between 1960 and 2025 based on assumptions of constant fertility and an average of 3 children per family. At constant fertility the available cultivable land shall be 0.4 hectares per person by 2025, while the latter assumption 0.8 hectares per person by 2025. The problem of access to key production resources such as land is exacerbated by traditional land tenure systems, poor land management, the fragmentation of farm holdings and over crowding in some regions. In addition, the dispersion and small size of rural communities restricts their ability to absorb and support basic modern amenities. During the “Green Revolution” era (1960 to 1980), there was a growing realisation that the industrial and service sectors will be unable to generate sufficient employment in the foreseeable feature. This combined with the need to reform obsolete agrarian systems led the government to open new lands for rural resettlement schemes and integrated rural development projects based on agriculture and the provision of basic support services. However, despite, the substantial financial investments these projects have not lived up to expectations. These have too often lapsed into stagnation in the face of an accentuating rural – urban dichotomy. The current agricultural policy is sectoral and focuses on specific cash crops. Agricultural extension under such a policy loses sight of the production objectives of the farm family, the basic foundation of indigenous farming systems and their influences on their socio-cultural environment. In spite of outstanding investments by the government to modernise agriculture and to improve upon rural livelihoods, the majority of rural 2 communities are still far from achieving anything near their production potential. The most available resource in rural areas is labour. It is largely under-utilised due to inadequate availability of their production inputs. Rural development and extension services have brought substantial changes in rural areas, but have not yet produced a large-scale transformation of rural structures. The upgrading of traditional rural settlements in Cameroon is unable to keep pace with population growth in these depressed regions. The consequence is the deterioration in the economic conditions of rural people. Migration of rural people to urban areas is therefore faster than the modernisation of agriculture and rural structures. The rehabilitation of already settled agricultural land through large-scale resettlement schemes and land reform is tedious due to distorted physical patterns, fragmentation of farm holdings, cultural constraints, technological weaknesses, and the primary of village and kinship loyalties. The question, therefore, is how to modernise rural structures and the farm family holding. There is a need to search for new farming systems that guarantee productivity, continuity, security and identity to the peasant. The inability to accelerate the modernisation of agriculture and rural structures will continue to increase the rural – urban dichotomy. The mounting problems related to urban and rural development are alarming. The economic crisis of the last two decades actually widened the gap between the poor and the middle class and between the urban and rural inhabitants. Many international organisations use an absolute of poverty, which is an income of one US Dollar per day per person. Even in developing countries, one US Dollar per day per person is barely enough for survival, let alone adequate food security. Cameroon is a country with a low Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI is a composite index of human development factors such as life expectancy; levels of education and income. It reconciles economic development...

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