Contract farming (CF) is increasingly seen as an effective mechanism to maximise the inclusion of and benefits for small-scale farmers, while giving some control over production to agribusinesses without requiring land ownership. In Cambodia, CF takes many forms and involves food and industrial crops, yet the different CF models and contract types have not been identified. Farmers and contractors have encountered many problems in obtaining reliable benefits from and sustaining CF schemes. The research objectives were to identify and evaluate the various models of CF […]

Improving the education system is one of the most significant challenges facing Cambodia. This study is the result of consultation and collaboration with national executive and legislative institutions, education institutions, development partners and private education providers that form a significant repository of skills, knowledge and experience. It encompasses several main topics: getting to grips with the skill gap; aiming high through higher education; shaping and scaling up TVET; securing secondary education; meeting basic learning needs through primary education; and lifelong […]

This paper estimates the incidence and intensity of catastrophic health payments and their impoverishment effects and identifies the sources of catastrophic payments by using the nationally representative household survey, the Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey conducted in 2004, 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2011 by the National Institute of Statistics. We find that the proportion of households with out-of-pocket health spending exceeding the 10 percent threshold (the incidence of catastrophic payments) declined from 12.3 percent in 2004 to 9.2 percent in 2011, and […]

The rights-based approach (RBA) to development emerged as a new and relatively authoritative paradigm, starting from the late 1990s. At its core is the argument that human rights and development converge and, unless the socio-economic rights of the poor are attained, poverty cannot be alleviated. Its approach is to shift NGOs’ strategy from providing charity to empowering the poor politically so that they are able to claim their rights. Recently, major bilateral and multilateral donors and international non-government organisations have […]

Agriculture plays an important role in sustaining rural livelihoods. Eighty-three percent of rural people are engaged in agriculture (NIS and MAFF 2014). An emerging problem facing agriculture is climate change. The anticipated impacts of climate change and variability on agriculture include changes in rainfall patterns, higher temperatures, increased frequency and intensity of flood and drought, and increased incidence of pests and disease (MOE and UNDP 2011). These serious problems emphasise the critical need for climate-smart agriculture (CSA) (FAO 2013). Among CSA techniques, the system of rice […]

The overall objective of this discussion paper is to advance the knowledge on rural livelihoods in Stung Treng, Cambodia. In a cluster analysis, five clusters with very different livelihood strategies are identified based on a sample of 600 rural households. Despite the fact that nearly all households are engaged in some form of subsistence farming, especially by growing rice, the richer clusters build on self-employment and higher-skilled wage employment. In contrast the middle income cluster mainly depends on natural resources […]