 The humid tropical climate of South Cameroon provides the perfect conditions for growing oil palm. In 2010, 230,000 tonnes were produced across the country and businesses see potential to further develop this valuable crop. Large companies like the state-owned Cameroonian Development Corporation, or CDC, produced nearly half of the country's palm oil. CDC has been credited by some for helping to develop rural Cameroon, but others are concerned its vast plantations are undermining food security and oil palm needs to be integrated with food crops to reduce environmental damage. Unless palm oil is farmed sustainably, Manasse Agbo, a former school principal, is concerned that local families will not have the foods that they need. Actually, there is some fear that the biofuel things can take all the land and since you cannot crop, there is no more expansion of land for food and farming may come in, which is a danger. Palm is like the king crop when it stands alone and the roots sort of grab the soil and there is no way for other crops to grow. Not only do industrial plantations impede on land that might otherwise be used for food crops, they also eat swathes of primary forest land and generate hazardous waste. Here in southwest Cameroon, palm oil country, rivers are contaminated by wastewater runoff from one of the CDC's industrial mills. That is the waste pipe denner. You have seen it. When they are milling, the bad water is coming out. We were using the place for farming but now we cannot farm again. It smells bad but we manage. We just can't manage it. Despite the issues created by the industrial cultivation of oil palm, it is still a valuable crop favored by many smallholder producers and many are able to make more money by milling what they grow to sell locally. In this village, Asumbo Lucy Edyengol can produce up to 300 litres of palm oil in two weeks. For her, oil palm is a much easier crop to produce than cocoa, the dominant crop in the village. It requires less painstaking labour in terms of clearing land. I don't have energy for cocoa with palms. You don't stress. You don't do spraying. I mean, you don't do clearing. The labour for palms and cocoa, I prefer the one for palms. I make much money on palms because, you know, this palm oil like this is daily consumption. People consume it every day. Bushmango comes seasonally. Yes, and it lasts for three months. But with palms, no, round the clock. Every two weeks, you harvest. Every two weeks, you harvest. So that's why I love palms. A mixture of crops and land uses will be needed to balance the economic interests of farmers like Lucy while ensuring enough land is devoted to food crops. This approach, referred to as the landscapes approach, will be required to make sure South Cameroon does not become dominated by endless rows of industrial oil palm and instead develops as a mixed functional landscape that provides both food and income for the local communities.