The Tadu Dairy Cooperative Society: A USAID Success Story

Thomas Jing

From Douala, a port city at the foot of Mount Cameroon, a major road winds its way northwestwards through receding forests, banana, pineapple, and coffee plantations. At Nkongsamba, the first real big town in its way, it starts to rise, gradually leaving behind some of the heat and insects of the equator. By the time it gets to Bamenda, the provincial capital of the North West (NW), one of the two English-speaking provinces of Cameroon, it is already at an altitude of about 1700 meters.

The NW is a sweeping lava plateau surrounded by fertile plains and valleys broken by volcanic peaks. The plateau has a tropical climate with two distinct seasons, the rainy and dry seasons. Temperatures sometimes experience a mean of 19.5 degrees Celsius but during the dry season “they frequently shoot above 40 degrees Celsius.”

With rainfall most of the year, the drainage pattern endows the NW with a luxuriant vegetal cover of open grassfields, interspersed with patches of forests. At this elevated altitude, with cold temperatures, these vast expanses are free from the ravages of the tse-tse flies, the insect parasite that transmits trypanosomiasis. The setting for cattle breeding and animal industries could not be better.

Cattle were introduced in the NW in 1916 when a Fulani chieftain called Ardo Sabga arrived from neighboring Nigeria with 10,000 head. According to Nkwi and Warnier, two eminent authorities on the history of the Western Grassfields of Cameroon, the arrival was “a vital turn in the economic situation of the Western Grassfields.”

In the early days, this vital economic sector experienced tremendous setbacks. Diseases such as the notorious cattle plague and the foot-and-mouth took their toll on the cattle population. Nevertheless, when Cameroon became independent in 1960 and created the Ministry of Livestock (MINEPIA), newly created veterinary services gave cattle breeding a fresh boost. As instrument for the promotion of livestock breeding, Presidential Order No. 182/CAB/PR of 27 September 1973 also created a National and Zoo-technical and Veterinary Center in Jakiri. In spite of all these efforts, the NW 1984/1985 MINEPIA annual report puts the total number of cattle at just 446.990 head.

To correct this lag, in 1974, the Heifer Project International (HIP) “…shipped American dairy cattle to the NW” and “in 1981 it teamed up with USAID and the Institute of Animal Research to construct laboratories and research facilities in Mankon, Bamenda,” the Cameroon Post of July 19-26, 1994, reports. The paper also maintains that “by 1994, HIP’s projects in the NW were situated in 37 villages involving 700 families.”
These were great strides but population growth still outpaced animal products such as meat and milk. Enter Lawrence Shang, a Cameroonian economist and businessman who studied in the US.

“Cameroon’s population is projected to increase by more than 3% a year between 1995 and 2025, resulting in million of mouths to feed,” he declares in his report. “Of these, more than 50% will be in cities and large towns. Meeting the food needs of these people will present enormous challenges.”
In a bid to account for the shortfall and also to respond to “…increasing prices of dairy products on the world market combined with shortages of scarce foreign exchange reserves…,” in 1988 he contacted MINEPIA authorities and two years later created the Tadu Dairy Cooperative Society (TDCS) in collaboration with the local cattle Fulanis (traditionally West African cattle breeders).

Tadu is a hilltop settlement located about 104 kilometers away from Bamenda and provides an ideal setting for the cooperative initiative. A survey conducted by MINEPIA dairy expert that polled over 140 Fulani family heads indicates “that up to 1000 and 3000 liters of milk could be collected daily during dry season and rainy seasons respectively within a 25km radius of Tadu. It also revealed that traditional pastoralists were extremely interested in cross-breeding and quite excited about the possibilities of working together as groups of producers to form cooperatives.”

“The TDCS is a multi-purpose cooperative which provides its members with access to new breeds, improved production practices, processing techniques, and marketing services,” states Lawrence Shang, the son of a former cooperative director. Identifying the need to improve local cattle species, TDCS adopted cattle cross-breeding as a major component of its program. “While much can be done to increase productivity by improving management systems and controlling livestock diseases, ultimately, the productivity of an animal is limited by its genetics,” he maintains.

A TDCS report states that the actual impact of its milk-producing scheme could be measured by using the output of a local breed and that of a TDCS crossbreed. The ordinary zebu cattle produces I liter of milk per day. A crossbreed of zebu and Holstein has been shown to produce 10 to 15 liters per day.
This tremendous discrepancy in output of the two breeds was instrumental in the acceleration of the Artificial Insemination (AI) program. With funds from USAID, five TDCS members were trained in AI techniques at Land O’Lakes, Minnesota, and the 21st Century Genetics in the US during the fall of 1991. Today, the cooperative runs seven breeding stations in TDCS districts of Tadu, Bamdzeng, Jakiri, Vecovi, Ibal-Oku, Barare and Sabga and hundreds of cross-bred cattle have been harvested from these efforts, reads a TDCS report.

Today, so popular is the AI program that the inseminators who were trained in the US, the report holds, have also been involved in training other AI technicians in other parts of Cameroon and neighboring Nigeria. “These in-country trainees are currently working as cattle breeding consultants in various cattle settlement in Cameroon and in neighboring Nigeria,” continues the report.

An important element in TDCS’ program with direct benefits on the environment has been range management that has reduced overgrazing and severe soil erosion and made the age-old practices of rampant bush-burning and nomadic pastoralism taboo among cooperative members.

To educate the wives of pastoralists on hygienic methods of milk handling, USAID sent “five Fulani women to Land O’Lakes, Minnesota, for training in proper milk collection, storage and testing procedures and upon their return to the Highlands in the fall of 1992, these women organized several milk quality workshops in the various TDCS districts.”

The program also includes milk transformation where member are trained “to provide avenues for the maximum and efficient utilization of all milk constituents and the preservation of these constituents in types and forms of milk products which have appropriate quality characteristics, general consumer acceptability and market demand.”

Since all these activities revolve around the health of the animals, the TDCS Animal Health Program was instituted and has been educating pastoralist on the use of routine prophylaxes such as dewormers, vaccines and detickers to prepare them for the genetically superior but less resistant cross-breeds.

Nothing speaks more eloquently on the success of the TDCS than the desire of the governments of neighboring states to use it as a model to involve rural communities in modern development. Says Lawrence Shang, “By involving so many participants who need to learn so many different skills, it (dairy) is an ideal sector in which to study and evaluate the effectiveness of technological transfer.”

Comments

[james osborn]

I am trying to contact Lawrence Shang from Cameron.He is involved with the dairy farm industry. My wife and I hosted him in our home when he was in the USA attending the University of Minnesota. We enjoyed his stay and are so proud of the work he is doing in your country. Would it be possible for you to give him my email address which is josborn@merytel.net and tel 715 268 2149 I would so like make contact with him again THANK JIM OSBORN

[Thomas Jing]

Dear Jim,
It is great to learn that you know Lawrence Shang. I will forward him your telephone number and email address. He was my classmate in Secondary School and at the time he embarked on the Tadu project, I was working with Cameroon's Ministry of livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industries.
Take care and God bless.
Thomas Jing

[guy noel houzan]

Thomas, Zokou here. Contact me immediately as soon as possible. I have been looking for you for years.
Please call me or text me: saideva.houzan@gmail.com
tel. +225 03 51 83 91 / 09 09 01 27

[Ibrahim Kaba]

Dear Jim,

Could you have Lawrence Shang contact me? I am his longtime friend from Guinea. We lost track of each other after I moved to california. I'd like his input on similar project in Guinea. Thank you and I look forward to hear from him.

[Aloysius Tume]

Hi Jim,
can you have Lawrence Shang contact me.
Thanks.

[John Mireny]

I am trying to locate the contacts of Mr. Lawrence Shang of Cameroon. We last met in the US Privatization Program Study Tour supported by the US State Department in 1998.
He was then involved with the dairy cooperative society in Cameroon. Shang became my best ally throughout the Program.
I am John Mireny, Tanzanian living in Dar es Salaam. He once visited Zanzibar.

Would it be possible for you to give him my email address which is mireny.john@gmail.com and tel. +255- 784-556355. I would so like make contact with him again.

[Ibrahim]

Hi,
I saw on the net that his Tadu project is not going well, if so, let him chat with me in order to try fixing the problem if fixable.
Let him contact me on imahdi1@yahoo.com
Ibrahim
South Africa