Increasing flexibility in Cambodian Monsoonal rice cropping systems

Agricultural Systems Analysis and Modelling

Dalgliesh, Neal

CSIRO

DOI  :  10.4225/08/584ee998bab0b
RP-ID  :  EP145386

学科分类：地球科学(综合)

澳大利亚|英语

来源: CSIRO Research Publications Repository

【 摘 要 】

In Cambodia, one of 4 Asian countries participating in the project, a transdisciplinary team of social and biophysical researchers are working with the farmers of Svay Rieng and Prey Veng provinces, to investigate opportunities to improve farmer resilience to the challenges they face in growing crops in a highly variable climate. Farmers in the medium and high lands have traditionally met the requirements of family food security by producing one medium duration rice crop during the monsoon season. This differs from the lowlands of the provinces where recession rice predominates-this system is not the focus of this document. Yields from the traditional growing of wet season rice have been relatively low, a result of the use of traditional or local varieties that are generally genetically inferior to modern varieties, low levels of nutrition and poor agronomic practice. While farmers have been able to meet their requirements in most years, social research shows that this is becoming more difficult due to the increasingly variable climate, particularly the impacts of drought and floods on production, and social and economic factors including the effect of rural migration on the agricultural labour supply . A participatory approach has been used to investigate options to increase the flexibility of the cropping system to meet the on-going production challenges while appreciating that it cannot be a ‘one size fits all’ solution due to the differing aspirational goals and livelihood trajectories of individuals.Consequently, on-farm research has focussed on a range of potential opportunities, anticipated to meet the needs of a broad range of livelihood types, from the small subsistence farmer growing sufficient rain-fed rice to meet food security requirements, while using surplus labour in off-farm enterprises, to those who saw farming as their main enterprise and were interested in optimising production thorough the adoption of technologies including the use of modern, short and medium duration varieties, supplementary irrigation, better crop nutrition, the use of mechanisation to reduce labour demands and better agronomic practice.