[en] Full text: Milk production in Cameroon was estimated at 184 000 tons. Yet the demand of milk products is far above production and 24% of national consumption is imported. Due to urbanization and population growth, milk production needs to double by the year 2020 if it is to meet the demand. Therefore, efforts have been made to increase dairy production. However the efforts of non-governmental organizations, research and government institutions failed to significantly boost domestic dairy production because farmers did not see the economic gain associated with potential biological improvements. A hypothesis was then devised whereby an integration of interventions at the level of farmers associating nutrition, health, reproduction and management would bring more economic benefits to smallholder farmers and improve dairy production. This involved reviewing dairy research done in Cameroon, carrying out a participatory rural appraisal and an economic opportunity survey at selected dairy farms, setting up various interventions on farms, investigating postpartum return to oestrus, evaluating milk quality and the impact of integrated interventions. This paper intends to critically evaluate the results of different studies and present the integrated method developed in this research. It also aims to set up guidelines for a successful sustainable improvement of dairy production in Cameroon. The study involved reviewing dairy research done in Cameroon. A participatory rural appraisal and an economic opportunity survey were carried out in selected dairy farms. On-farm interventions were set up, investigating cow reproduction, evaluating milk quality, setting up an artificial insemination centre and the impact of integrated interventions. Guidelines for improvement of the dairy sector were drawn. These series of experiments were designed to evaluate the impact of interventions carried out holistically. In small-scale dairy systems the uptake and use of research results by wider communities of farmers, organization and livestock extension services has often been less than expected. This in turn resulted in interventions for supplementary feeding, or for improving reproductive performance that did not demonstrate an economic benefit to the farmers. One of the reasons is that they focused only on one constraint or one discipline at a time, and other concurrent production problems were limiting the economic benefits. This study has developed an integrated method in improving dairy production in Cameroon and has found that marketing and milk production per cow per day were the most limiting factors of dairy improvement. Interventions were carried out to solve these constraints and others. Farmers adopting interventions had returns of 193% and 232% with or without opportunity costs proving the positive impact of interventions using the integrated method. The integrated method in solving these constraints will bring much improvement and clear economic benefits to smallholder farmers, proving its effectiveness in ensuring improvement of dairy systems in Cameroon. These interventions need to be spread to more farms in the country. This method needs to be adopted for further dairy production improvement by the creation of multidisciplinary intervention teams and the training of integrated intervention specialists in the dairy sector. The application of integrated interventions in dairying requires the synergistic action from the government, researchers, non-governmental organizations and farmers. It requires expertise from many different fields and calls for the need to create integrated action teems in each administrative region. Each team will be multidisciplinary constituted of an extension agent, an animal nutritionist, a veterinarian, a socio-economist, a dairy technologist and a reproduction scientist. It is quite likely that there be a lack of such specialists in each subdivision. In which case there can be a creation of intervention teams covering special areas of the country. It is not that these intervention teams will replace the private sector but they will guide local authorities in the extension of research results and in actions needed for regulation, advice and support the private sector. (author)