Are border closures encouraging agricultural innovation ? For example, there is a plentiful supply of coconuts in Cambodia.
Stop importing, and start producing, is the way forward, as this article shows:

Banteay Srei farmer teams up with NGO to produce coconut fertiliser
Raksmey Hong | Publication date 22 March 2021 | 21:43 ICT
With borders sometimes closed to trade during the pandemic, Cambodia’s farmers have had to come up with new ways to get things done – including sometimes making changes to where they sell their crops and who they sell them to – but there have also been some changes to how they grow them as well.

In the past, farmers have mostly bought their fertiliser from merchants who imported it from neighbouring countries. During the Covid-19 pandemic, however, border crossings have been restricted which has posed production challenges for Cambodia’s farmers.

One commonly imported fertiliser has been coco-peat or coir, the natural fibres from the outside husk of coconuts. Early on, the pandemic limited the amount of this fertiliser available to Cambodia’s farmers.

Now, a Banteay Srei district farmer is working with an NGO to produce coir or coco-peat fertiliser for his own vegetable seedlings and to sell to other farmers at the nursery growing stage.

Khong Sophoan, project director of International Development Enterprises (iDE) says their main goal was to reduce reliance on imported products.

“When Thailand closed its border in March of last year, our farmers faced a shortage of many supplies, including coir*.

“We thought that if the border continued to be closed we’d definitely need to find a new source for it in order to sow our melon seeds,” he says.
Full article: https://www.phnompenhpost.com/lifestyle ... fertiliser

*Coir
Coir, or coconut fibre, is a natural fibre extracted from the outer husk of coconut and used in products such as floor mats, doormats, brushes and mattresses. Coir is the fibrous material found between the hard, internal shell and the outer coat of a coconut.Wikipedia

Username Taken wrote: ↑Tue Mar 23, 2021 6:17 pm Strange that they refer to it as a fertilizer. I would think that coir would make an excellent growing medium for seedlings, but would need nutrients for healthy growth.

It says further on that the husk is a component to which they add cow dung, termite soil and rice husks; all things that are easily available:

Kean was known to be a hard-working farmer, which is why iDE chose him as their first coco-peat producer and the organisation bought him the necessary machinery and taught him the recipe to make coconut husks into nutrient-rich nursery soil.

Kean tells The Post that “when we examined the product, we thought that we could probably have been producing it ourselves this whole time.

“iDE provided me with a crushing machine to mill coconut husks. We also added cow dung, termite mound soil, rice hulls and trichoderma, a type of fungus that helps protect plants from other fungi,” Kean says.