Accelerating Inclusive Cassava Market Development (AI-CMD)

PROJECT BACKGROUND

The cassava sector in Cambodia has undergone significant expansion over the past decade to become the second most important agricultural sector. Appreciating the market opportunities and the high potential benefits to national economic development, the Government of Cambodia has identified the cassava sector as one of the national priority sectors. The global and regional demand for cassava has opened opportunities for Cambodia to increase its crop productivity, upgrade its products lines while ensuring resilience and sustainability of farming systems.

It is recognized that the rapid increase of cassava cultivation throughout the country has not been accompanied yet by the adoption of improved production technologies and practices aimed at addressing the long-term sustainability of the sector. As such, the sector remains exposed to numerous risks (e.g. market price fluctuation, pest and disease outbreaks and extreme weather events) that exacerbate smallholder’s farmer’s vulnerability to potential shocks and stress.

KEY EXPECTED RESULTS

The overall objective of the project is to enhance prosperity of Cassava Smallholder farmers through increasingly profitable links to agri-business and markets.

In line with its overall objective, the project expects to:

• Increasing farmers’ profits through inclusive cassava value chain development
• Leveraging mutual benefits of farmers and private sectors by creating reliable market-led supply chain
• Enhancing capacity of national institutions and sub-national administration to design and implement sustainable cassava value chain development strategies

EXPECTED DELIVERABLES

Cassava smallholder farmers’ productivity increased through the adoption of practical measures

• Provision of extension services to improve farming productivity
• Provision of improved machinery services
• Loss during harvest and post-harvest are reduced

Supply chain reliability reinforced through inclusive contract farming and new product development

• Building capacity of smallholder farmer groups/organizations
• Reinforce market linkages between farmers and processing factories
• Promotion of new value-added products

Capacity of national institutions, SNAs, and local agents are improved to lead and facilitate cassava value chain development

• Establish a viable cassava Market information system
• Capacity of National institutions, SNAs and local agent are built to carry out scaling-up activities
• Provision of policies monitoring support and building the sector sustainability