ABSTRACT:
Oil palm plantations in Cameroon display significant yield gaps, limiting their potential in alleviating poverty in the country. Understanding the causes of these yield gaps requires multifaceted studies. This study assessed perceptions of smallholders and plantation workers of PAMOL Plantations PLC. (PAMOL) and the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC) on the state of output on their plantations. A total of 277 plantation workers and smallholders were sampled through a purposive stratified approach and data were analysed in SPSS version 21. A majority (66.17%) of smallholders were not satisfied with nursery output due to seedling mortality (33.90%), stunted growth (23.40%) and low survival rate (42.70%). Perception of weeding operations was poor (74.44%) due to farms being weedy (46.80%), lack of footpaths (34.10%) and presence of recalcitrant weeds (19.00%). Respondents agreed that there is a death of seedlings in the nursery (χ2 = 6.033, p = 0.014). Triangulation with Quality Standards suggests a disagreement between the perceptions of nursery output, pruning and harvesting and the recommended standards on the one hand, and alignment in weeding operations and the quality standards on the other. Better field monitoring, enforcement of quality benchmarks, and studies towards the revision of the standards for weeding operations are recommended.