Title: Experiences with System of Rice Intensification (SRI) in Cambodia
Abstract: Rice production in Cambodia, like in many other countries of the region, dominates the agricultural sector. Rice farming provides food, income and employment for about 77 % of the Cambodian population. However, yields of rice production with an estimated average of 1.9 t/ha are among the lowest in the South-East Asia region. Furthermore, about 89% of national rice production ( 89% of 4,041 tons in 1999) is largely the result of only one rain-fed crop per year. Under the Pol Pot regime, many irrigation canals were dug with huge amount of human labor. Many of them never functioned, because they were designed on the map not considering the actual situation in the field. Consequently the area under irrigation is still small in the national context. To date national rice production relies on the wet season crop, which is cultivated between May to October. Apart from rainfall, the wet season rice crop in most parts of the country depends upon the floodwater from the Mekong river and the great Ton Le Sap lake. Flood levels higher than normal destroy large areas of rice crop like in the year 2000. With these natural conditions it is not uncommon to have flood and drought problems at the same time in different parts of the country. Farmers try to adapt to this rainfall and flood pattern by combining as much as possible short, medium and long-term varieties, so that they can possibly get two crops out of the wet season. Farmers traditionally use the great number of local varieties, including glutinous rice varieties. At the same time, recent development efforts resulted in a wide spread use of improved high yielding varieties, Increasing rice production in Cambodia is an explicit goal of many development efforts from international and national projects during the last decade. The approaches to increase rice yields focus on the identification and dissemination of improved varieties, recommendation of correct fertilizer application, as well as on Integrated Pest Management (IPM). Although a substantial increase of yields can be observed in certain locations, a breakthrough on national level rice production cannot yet be acknowledged.
Publication Year: 2002
Publication Date: 2002-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot