FAO/GIEWS - Foodcrops & Shortages 06/00 - CAMBODIA (12 June)
Serious incidences of the livestock diseases Black leg Haemorrhagic septicaemia and foot and mouth diseases are reported from 15 provinces. Large numbers of animals are reported to have died as a result. The main agricultural activities include harvesting of dry season crops and planting transplanting of main wet season rice for harvesting from October/November onwards. Total 1999/2000 paddy production was a record estimated at a 4 million tonnes, some 500 000 tonnes or 14 percent above the previous year. Following bumper production and poor demand from neighbouring countries, which also had favourable dry season production this year, rice prices are reported to have fallen to a nineyear low. Most, around 83 percent, of paddy production is from the wet season crop, and the remainder from flood recession and dry season production. Rice also accounts for some 84 percent of annual food crop production and is planted on around 90 percent of cropped area, mainly in the Central Mekong Basin and Delta and the Tonle Sap Plain. Despite a satisfactory food supply situation overall, a sizeable section of the population remains vulnerable to food shortages, due to wide variation in grain production in surplus and deficit areas, poor marketing infrastructure and inadequate employment opportunities. In part some of these needs are being met through a WFP Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation, largely using local purchases of rice. In 2000, WFP will assist approximately 1.5 million beneficiaries in targeted food-insecure communes in 24 provinces, providing on average two months of basic food needs, primarily through food-for-work activities.
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