Cambodia to grow more vegetables, reduce imports.

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Kuroneko
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Re: Cambodia to grow more vegetables, reduce imports.

Post by Kuroneko »

John Bingham wrote:
juansweetpotato wrote:
John Bingham wrote:
juansweetpotato wrote: Precisely. How about a government funded school of agriculture that supplies free scholarships?
How about The Royal University of Agriculture that opened in 1964?

http://www.rua.edu.kh/
Oh Yeah? What about it? please tell me more - what sort of stuff do they get up to? Free scholarships for the poor but smart? Rice I suppose. Anything else? Obviously that just supports my argument that they would be hopeless.
There's no point in discussing it with someone who is ignorant of the institution's existence, has already formed conclusions about something they know nothing about and who can't even be bothered to click on a link. You're fucking hopeless.
Not forgetting the Prek Leap National College of Agriculture which is just up the road from me.

The role of PNCA is to take a proactive approach in education and training with emphasis on subjects in agriculture and other relevant areas.The school’s main purposes are:

To educate graduates in the field of agriculture, forestry and fisheries.
To train agricultural extension workers and farmers in agriculture and rural development.
To disseminate proper agricultural knowledge and technology to farmers.
To carry out research and compile and document production techniques.
To co-operate with local and international institutions to increase the teaching capacity and human resources at the school.

Here's one of their research projects - Sustainable Rice Fish Integration

The Sustainable Rice Fish Integration (SRFI) Project has been carefully designed to respond to poverty reduction needs in Cambodia. The project will form the basis of a partnership between Prek Leap National School of Agriculture (PNSA) and the Fisheries and Marine Institute of Memorial University (MI). PNSA is a national college within the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) mandated to provide extension training curriculum in agriculture and fisheries. A cornerstone of MI’s 40-year history is its community-based training of nontraditional learners, a model that has been successfully applied to development initiatives in Africa and Southeast Asia.


And Here's the training courses offered by the short course centre.

Short Course Center, Prek Leap National School of Agriculture provides various training courses on agriculture techniques and other related sciences. We have the pleasure to announce that the following training courses:

Agricultural Extension
Agro- Products Processing Techniques
Agro-forestry
Farmer Field School Management
Fish Growth Out Techniques
Fish Seed Production Techniques
Fruit Tree Propagation and Management
Home Organic Gardening
Integrated Pest Management
Mushroom Cultivation
Mushroom Spore Production
Participatory Rural Appraisal
Rural Credit Management
Animal Raising Techniques for Chicken Pig and Cattle
Fishery Community Development and Management
Fruit Tree Propagation and Management
Project Planning and Management
Socio-Research Methodology

Training fee is charged for US$ 95.00 per participant for a week course including training, materials, refreshment and certificate. The fee doesn’t cover the travel expenses and accommodation.

More Information:
Short Course Center/Continuing Education
Prek Leap National College of Agriculture
Chroy Changva, Phnom Penh
E-mail: [email protected]
Website http://pnsa.edu.kh/wp/
Anchor Moy
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Re: Cambodia to grow more vegetables, reduce imports.

Post by Anchor Moy »

:thumb:
To disseminate proper agricultural knowledge and technology to farmers.
This needs to be developed - spread the knowledge - since most farmers can't afford to pay $95 for a week's course.
If they are in a co-operative situation, maybe they could go-fund someone from the co-op to do the course, who would then come back and share it locally. Could even be paying if you could get 50 local farmers who will pay $2 a head for a second-hand course on how to improve their harvests.
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Re: Cambodia to grow more vegetables, reduce imports.

Post by Kuroneko »

Quite a few NGO's working in the area of agricultural development, here's one:

International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)

Since 1996, IFAD has invested US$140.4 million in eight projects in Cambodia, which have mobilized overall investments for a total of US$283.6 million, benefiting 1,204,300 households. IFAD loans support rural and agricultural development and improvement of the livestock subsector. Reducing rural poverty by improving rural livelihoods is the objective of IFAD's efforts to empower Cambodia's poor people to raise their incomes and standards of living.

The IFAD country programme has three strategic objectives:
Enable poor smallholders to take advantage of market opportunities
Increase resilience to climate change and other shocks in poor rural households and communities
Improve poor households' access to strengthened rural services.

IFAD-funded activities in Cambodia target the provinces with the highest rates of poverty and, within those provinces, the poorest people and communities.

The poorest groups include:
Poor rural households with access to only small areas of land and no other productive assets who are likely to be food insecure and in debt, with little if any access to off-farm employment opportunities

Landless rural people who are willing to learn skills for livestock raising, off-farm income-generating activities or wage employment

Women and households headed by women with a large number of dependents

Other poor rural households such as those in indigenous ethnic minority communities.

The participatory approach towards community development is at the core of IFAD-financed initiatives in the country. It builds the capacity of grass-roots institutions and fosters direct ownership of investment programmes by the people who benefit from them.https://operations.ifad.org/web/ifad/op ... s/cambodia
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Kuroneko
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Re: Cambodia to grow more vegetables, reduce imports.

Post by Kuroneko »

Anchor Moy wrote::thumb:
To disseminate proper agricultural knowledge and technology to farmers.
This needs to be developed - spread the knowledge - since most farmers can't afford to pay $95 for a week's course.
If they are in a co-operative situation, maybe they could go-fund someone from the co-op to do the course, who would then come back and share it locally. Could even be paying if you could get 50 local farmers who will pay $2 a head for a second-hand course on how to improve their harvests.
Agreed, while some NGO programs are doing quite good work they can in some instances miss the point. For example while assisting the very poor is very laudable, the program can miss the less poor people who are working in agriculture and also need educating about improving methods and the dangers of pesticides and agrichemicals.
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Re: Cambodia to grow more vegetables, reduce imports.

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these NGOs dont realise that once they leave, these farmers goes back to their old ways of farming, slash & burn, overly dependent on pesticides, growth hormones, etc, i have seen rice farmers at takeo with japanese rice planting machines, once the japs left, the machine broke down, the next month it is collecting rust beside the house :thumb: :thumb: :thumb:
Money is not the problem, the problem is no money
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Kuroneko
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Re: Cambodia to grow more vegetables, reduce imports.

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bolueeleh wrote:these NGOs dont realise that once they leave, these farmers goes back to their old ways of farming, slash & burn, overly dependent on pesticides, growth hormones, etc, i have seen rice farmers at takeo with japanese rice planting machines, once the japs left, the machine broke down, the next month it is collecting rust beside the house :thumb: :thumb: :thumb:

I think they're well aware of the problem, or at least some of them are. That's one of the problems of instigating short term interventions which often favour technical solutions over behavioural change and sustainability. Of course they are structured into particular methodologies by the limitation of their funding. One majour issue also is that some NGO's come to solve their conception of a local problem, which can be at odds with the local perception of a problem, and of course this inevitably leads to failure.

These problems are not only confined to developing countries, we have this problem also in Australia. One may work on some innovative solutions to particular problems which are quite successful only to have them overturned by a successive government which then reverts to the "old ways" of doing things.

However I'd be interested to know how you would solve the problem you outlined concerning the Japanese rice planting machines.
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Re: Cambodia to grow more vegetables, reduce imports.

Post by juansweetpotato »

Yes guys, I was well aware of the university and the NGOs before I made my comments. Unknown to Bingham, I have read a quite detailed report into the agricultural markets here - I especially read-up on veg. As usual the farmers are being stitched-up by the favored wealthy families. It's not just growing it, it's getting it to a market and getting a fair price. Total monopoly. I believe there is a high possibility that the government is just releasing this information because it knows it should have done something about this years ago. And so does everyone else. Maybe there's an election coming up?

I seriously hope it going to be different this time, but I won't be holding my breath.
Meanwhile, with all those notable institutions and well meaning Barang - Cambodia is still importing over $200,000,000 of vegetables per anum.
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Re: Cambodia to grow more vegetables, reduce imports.

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Kuroneko wrote: However I'd be interested to know how you would solve the problem you outlined concerning the Japanese rice planting machines.
set up a roving machine sharing program, what i saw was that only a few home or villages shared those machines, they neither have the resources nor know how to properly maintain those machines, and those NGOs should have trained and setup mechanics to service those machines, in the end they fall back to part timers for the planting and harvesting
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Re: Cambodia to grow more vegetables, reduce imports.

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Username Taken wrote:I expect that the wealthy farmers (they with connections in the right places) will create co-operatives at the provincial or district level. The argument will be that the wealthy farmers have better transport facilities, so they will be responsible for transporting the produce to the markets and selling it. The poor farmers will only be allowed to sell to their local co-operative.
The poor farmers will be paid chicken-feed for their produce, and the wealthy farmers will make the real profits.
I think this is already the case, and often when the poor farmers start up co-ops they are labeled as subversive NGOs because they are interfering with the local power structure. ie. An alternative transport and marketing system organized by locals, bypassing the graft system in place, may get severely stamped on by local authorities.
So I agree with some of what JSP says, but I hope that the situation will improve.

Sometimes elections push politicians into action. Maybe there will be some improvements for small farmers, or maybe not, but at the very least the problem of Cambodia's food dependency is being acknowledged. Small steps...
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Re: Cambodia to grow more vegetables, reduce imports.

Post by juansweetpotato »

Anchor Moy wrote:
Username Taken wrote:I expect that the wealthy farmers (they with connections in the right places) will create co-operatives at the provincial or district level. The argument will be that the wealthy farmers have better transport facilities, so they will be responsible for transporting the produce to the markets and selling it. The poor farmers will only be allowed to sell to their local co-operative.
The poor farmers will be paid chicken-feed for their produce, and the wealthy farmers will make the real profits.
I think this is already the case, and often when the poor farmers start up co-ops they are labeled as subversive NGOs because they are interfering with the local power structure. ie. An alternative transport and marketing system organized by locals, bypassing the graft system in place, may get severely stamped on by local authorities.
So I agree with some of what JSP says, but I hope that the situation will improve.

Sometimes elections push politicians into action. Maybe there will be some improvements for small farmers, or maybe not, but at the very least the problem of Cambodia's food dependency is being acknowledged. Small steps...
If it follows the English, Indian and SEA model, most of the small farmers will be put out of business by the very large operations. Think of all those farmers recently displaced by large sugar growers, and their need for large dams. Small dams would have less of an impact on the environment and would also help the small farmers.

Here's a little reminder of what it could be like here. Remember the fuel crisis in Cuba?
Twenty years on...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8213617.stm
... Havana has almost 200 urban allotments - known as organiponicos - providing four million tonnes of vegetables every year - helping the country to become 90% self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables.

... The organiponico uses raised beds filled with about 50% high-quality organic material (such as manure), 25% composted waste such as rice husks and coffee bean shells, and 25% soil.

As well as marigolds, basil and neem trees are planted around the containers to keep the aphids and beetles at bay. Sunflowers and corn are also planted around the beds to attract beneficial insects such as ladybirds and lace wings. Sticky paper or plastic funnel-shaped bottles are positioned throughout the beds to trap harmful pests that do get into the garden...
"Can you spare some cutter for an old man?"
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