Euchema cottonni in Cambodia

Seaweed culture, which was introduced in 1999 in Cambodia, is considered to be one of the best employment opportunities for local people who live along the coastline of Cambodia.

Cottonni was first introduced to Cambodia in 1999. More than 500 kg of Eucheuma alverezii or Eucheuma cottonni was brought from Malaysia by a Malaysian company called 'Star Private Enterprise Limited', which started cultivating this seaweed close to the Prek Treng bridge of Sihanoukville, and then moved to Ream. Due to some problems with the Royal Navy in the area, production was again moved to Stung Hav. After that, the office was moved and finally settled in Koh Tunsay in Kep province. In Kep, there were more challenges with illegal competitors, so again the project was forced to move office to Prek Ampil Commune of Kampot province by the end of 2000. From 1999 to 2000, the company completely lost any profit because only 16 tons of seaweed were exported to Malaysia. In 2001, the company exported about 303 tons of seaweed and got more benefits, but in 2002 the production decreased to 241 tons due to the poor quality of the seaweed. The company plans to increase the production to 345 tons of export by the middle of May 2003.

The study has focused on reviews of literatures, socio-economic surveys and direct observations in the site to evaluate the socio-economic benefits of seaweed farming and the impacts of seaweed farming on the environment.

Many fieldwork activities were carried out in the site including direct observation, and many stakeholders, especially two groups of fishers and seaweed farmers, have been randomly selected for interview. Data were analysed and interpreted and incorporated into the report. The report also included farming history and techniques, problems encountered, social and environmental impacts, and policy guidelines. Conclusions and recommendations were also mentioned.

The study was strongly anchored on both social and economic surveys. Future plans include a scientific study on the project's biological and ecological impacts.

The Adoption of Sen Pidao and Phka Rumduol Varieties

Rice is the most potential crop in Cambodian agriculture because her people daily eat rice as staple food; therefore, all almost farmers in the field cultivate it on their agricultural land. Although not growing for sale, they need rice for home food supply. To alleviate poverty in rural areas, the Royal Government of Cambodia in the fourth mandate has been implementing the improvement of agriculture in the first angle of Rectangular Strategy. To respond to an increase in food demand, in line with the government strategy, Cambodian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI) released two different aromatic varieties, Phka Rumduol in 1999 and Sen Pidao in 2002. An obvious casestudy in Otaky commune, Thmor Koul district, Battambang province, has been stated to investigate the production of these varieties.

Packed Phka Rumduol and Sen Pidao Varieties

Usually, farmers in Otaky commune do the farming between April and November. Through the study, they practice Phka Rumduol, Phka Knhey and Neang Khon in rainy season and do Sen Kror Ob and Phka Malis in early wet season. In rice production, they have two different cultivation methods: transplanting and direct seeding. In case of rainy season with transplanting method, if investing 1 Riel, they receive 1.346 Riels in return for Phka Rumduol, 1.131 Riels in return for Phka Knhey, (1.239 Riels in return for aromatic rice), and 1.089 Riels in return for nonaromatic rice Neang Khon. In another case of rainy season with direct-seeding cultivation method, if investing 1 Riel, they get 1.462 Riels in return for Phka Rumduol, 1.246 Riels in return for Phka Knhey, (1.354 Riels in return for aromatic rice), and 1.207 Riels in return for nonaromatic rice Neang Khon. In the last case of early wet season with direct-seeding cultivation method, if investing 1 Riel, they convert it into 1.451 Riels in return for Sen Kror Ob and 1.270 Riels in return for Phka Malis.

Sen Pidao Variety

Compared between aromatic-rice productions, the production in early wet season is more economic efficient than the one in rainy season both with transplanting and direct-seeding cultivation methods. However, looked into Phka Rumduol production, it is the most economically efficient among aromatic rice varieties. Unfortunately, it is photoperiod sensitivity, which is able to grow only in rainy season. Different from Phka Rumduol, Sen Pidao has been abandoned because this variety is not demanded by the local mills. It is reasoned that Sen Pidao’s grain is smaller than other aromatic varieties’, resulting in not able to be combined with others.

Reference

Trak, P., (2009), Factors Affecting the Efficiency and Adoption of Sen Pidao and Phka Rumduol Varieties of Project CARF-CARDI 162 in Otaky Commune, Thmor Koul District, Battambang Province

Agriculture as a Source of Food Security

With globalization and the expansion of trade, most countries can achieve their food security objectives through enhancing their capacity to purchase food on the international market. Inside the country, when food markets work, household food insecurity is an income problem, not a problem of producing more of one's own food.

However, food markets do not always work. One situation where this happens is poor countries with no foreign exchange generation capacity outside agriculture that must rely on their own capacity to produce to achieve  food security. This includes countries such as Ethiopia, Somalia, Niger, and Rwanda that have no mineral resources to import enough food to meet national needs. It also applies to households with weak connections to markets because infrastructure is deficient, they are in very remote areas, or find themselves unemployed. These countries and households thus face the challenge of securing at least part of their food needs through their own capacity to produce. The challenge becomes quite forbidding if the country or households have very limited productive assets or find themselves under failed states and unfavorable investment climates.

Reference

Byerlee, D., (2007), Agriculture for Development: the World Bank's 2008 World Development Report

Agriculture as a Source of Resources and Environmental Services for the Rest of Society

Agriculture is a major user of natural resources, in particular 85 percent of tapped fresh water and a third of the land area. Water is increasingly scarce and polluted, and the rapidly rising urban population demands access to water for consumers and industry. Making more efficient use of water in agriculture so some water can freed for other uses is another reason to invest in agriculture.

At the moment, through agricultural practices, livestock, and deforestation induced by expansion of the agricultural frontier, agriculture contributes some 30 percent of the green house gas (GHG) emissions that contributes to global climate change. Given the low value added per unit of GHG in agriculture compared to industry and services, it is good economics to compensate farmers not to emit these gases.

Agriculture can also contribute to watershed management for better water supply to reserviors, conservation of biodiversity in smallholder farming, and landscape improvement that offers recreation and attraction for tourism.

Reference

Byerlee, D., (2007), Agriculture for Development: the World Bank's 2008 World Development Report

Agriculture as a Source of Business Opportunities

Think here of supplying the supermarkets of Mexico or Beijing with fresh produce, exporting to Europe cut flowers from Ethiopia and green beans from Kenya, sweet peas from the highlands of Guatemala to the Safeways in the United States, and soybeans and biofuels from Brazil to the booming Chinese market. These are major business opportunities, that were often made possible by wise public investments in research to secure comparative advantage and by market infrastructure to support these transactions.

The challenge here is to turn these business opportunities into instruments for poverty reduction. This can be done by helping smallholders be part of the market booms, or by rural workers finding employment in agriculture and in the agro-processing sector. The Chile model where exports of fruits and wine to the whole world create major sources of employment in the agro-processing sector, especially for women, provides one of the most accomplished examples.

Reference

Byerlee, D., (2007), Agriculture for Development: the World Bank's 2008 World Development Report

Agriculture as an Instrument for Poverty Reduction

Agriculture is still a major of life for humanity. Half of the world's population lives in rural areas, 2.5 billion are related to agriculture for their survival, and 1.3 billion are smallholders. Some 70 percent of the world's poor and three fourth of the world's malnourished are located in rural areas among households who mainly depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. There is no way the Millennium Development Goal of halving extreme poverty between 1990 and 2015 will be met in Africa and South Asia (where the large majority of the world's poor are located) without an explicit focus on rural poverty.

Fortunately, agricultural productivity growth has proved to be exceptionally effective for poverty reduction. This is because farming is an activity dispersed in millions of small farms, many of the poorest of the poor are agricultural landless workers who depend on agriculture for employment, and food is the main expenditure for poor consumers so that cheaper food is a major boon for their welfare. In middle income countries like India, China, Morocco, and Indonesia, income gaps between rural and urban areas are rising rapidly, creating major frustrations among rural populations and eventual political instability and violence. Reducing income gaps thus becomes a political priority, calling on the powers of agricultural growth as one of the instruments to achieve this objective.

Reference

Byerlee, D., (2007), Agriculture for Development: the World Bank's 2008 World Development Report

Agriculture as a Source of National Economic Growth

This concept has been learned through the history of Western countries and Japan, where agricultural revolutions always preceded and supported the occurrence of industrial revolutions. More recently, the household responsibility system that marked the end of collectivization in China and the Green Revolution that multiplied yields of food grains by two or three in India allowed to accelerate agricultural growth, reduce poverty, and induce economic take-offs in other economic sectors, particularly industry in China and services in India.

This works as productivity growth in agriculture, frees labor for employment in industry and services, delivers cheap food for consumers, transfers savings and foreign exchange for investment in other sectors, and creates demand for the products of industry and services based on rising farmers' incomes.

As growth in other sectors accelerates, the share of agriculture in the economy and in total employment shrinks, a sign of success. In the poor countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, some 50 percent of the labor force. If agriculture fails to deliver more growth, little else can replace it.

Rice Cultivation in Cambodia

Reference

Byerlee, D., (2007), Agriculture for Development: the World Bank's 2008 World Development Report

The World Bank's 2008 World Development Report

The 2008 World Development Report will be on "Agriculture for Development in changing world". It argues that agriculture can play five essential functions for development: a source of overall economic growth, an instrument for poverty reduction, a business opportunity, a provider of environment services, and a tool for food security. Yet, these functions have been under-and mis-used, calling for major redress in the way governments and international donors use agriculture as a key instrument for development.

Agriculture has indeed been at the origin of multiple development successes, sometimes stunning like initiating accelerated growth and sustaining massive poverty reduction in China and India, the awakening giants that harbor some 40 percent of humanity. There are also disastrous failures in using the powers of agriculture as an instrument for development, most particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is cursed by continuing economic stagnation, mass poverty, pervasiveness of disastrous diseases such as HIV/AIDS, and the periodic recurrence of intolerable famines. So, how did agriculture help where it worked for development, and what could be done to make it work where it has to this day failed to deliver its development powers? This is the issue addressed in the World Development Report (WDR) 2008 by the World Bank.

Agriculture has five functions in economic development that make it totally unique. They are:

1. a source of national economic growth
2. an instrument for poverty reduction
3. an opportunity for profitable business investments
4. a source of natural resources for urban use and of environmental services
5. an instrument for food security in the poorest countries 

with no foreign exchange earnings to import their food needs.

Cambodian farmers are transplanting in their paddy field