Concerning to the project "Linking Farmers to Market for Rural Prosperity in Prey Veng and Svay Rieng provinces of Cambodia" which has been implementing by CEDAC (Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture)is now moving on the progress. It is to note that IDE (International Development Enterprises) which is the funding agency of this project has recently facilitated to select PEA (Private Extension Agents), PEA will be the one who link farmers access to high quality agriculture input supplies, specialized on vegetable seeds and drip irrigation equipments and so on.
Regarding to the farmers' activities in the field, vegetable growing have been applying after harvesting rice. It is a good time for vegetable growing in Cambodia meanwhile farmers have already harvested rice in December and January and there are some remaining raining water in the rice field or ponds so that they can grow vegetable, the vegetable is mainly used for family consumption. Actually, most of Cambodian farmers are highly dependent on raining water as they have no access to irrigation scheme like canal, etc. By the reason, farmers are hard to grow vegetable especially in the dry season meanwhile they have no sufficient water for watering their crops. The arable land is kept free without any cover crops, it indicates that farmers have not used as much as possible the productivity of arable land and poor knowledge and skill in term of soil nutrient management in the dry season, the rice straw were slashed and burned without understanding of its advantages for covering the land.
60%-70% of vegetables in Cambodia has been imported from Vietnam (IDE Cambodia), so it is a good potential for Cambodian farmers to grow vegetables for domestic supply. But the constraint is high production cost that is not able to compete with imported products. SUSTAINABLE ALTERNATIVE AGRICULTURAL FARMING SHOULD BE CONSIDERED!
