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A major coffee production area until the end of the 1980s, the Balessing group of villages in West Cameroon is now an important market garden production area. This change has led to increasing wage labor as a production strategy on the local farms. This paper documents this phenomenon by looking at the living and working conditions of the employees in question. It shows that, although agricultural wage labor contributes to the growth of agricultural production in this locality through increased yields and a substantial improvement in producers’ incomes, it does not guarantee the stabilization of a better socio-economic situation for the workers.