From the fertile fields of Cambodia to the dense rainforests of Indonesia and Lao PDR, Southeast Asia's agricultural lands and forest resources are of social and ecological significance to the region. Home to over 300 million rural inhabitants, as many as 140 million people rely on forests for their livelihoods, nutrition,...

Food environments are a critical place within the food system to implement interventions aimed at enabling sustainable diets. In this perspective article, we argue for the need for food environment research to more comprehensively examine the different types of food environments that people access within their communities to ensure that...

The report underscores the pivotal role of women in agrifood systems globally, often serving as the backbone of employment and livelihoods, particularly in developing nations. Despite increasing recognition in climate plans, women still encounter marginalization and vulnerability in agriculture, facing low-skilled and informal work. Addressing this necessitates integrating gender considerations...

Over the past two decades, the Mekong region has experienced significant transformation of its agricultural sector from subsistence farming to export crops driven by the expansion of agricultural land and of irrigation, plus intensification thanks to mechanization and the use of chemical inputs. In the context of agrarian transition, maintaining...

Dried Fish Matters: Mapping the Social Economy of Dried Fish in South and Southeast Asia for Enhanced Wellbeing and Nutrition, or DFM, is a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada Partnership Grant project. The project spans a duration of eight years: 2018-2026, and involves research in six focus...

Biodiversity is one of the 13 principles underpinning the work of the Agroecology Coalition. On the International Day for Biological Diversity, we speak to Martin Oulu, coordinator of our member organization ISFAA (Kenya), about agroecology, biodiversity, and the challenges that the current food system presents in this respect. In this article...

How can we reach farmers with ecologically-based Integrated Pest Management (IPM) while creating a supportive context for adoption by farmers and relevant stakeholders? We assessed a new method – Adaptive Learning Networks – from reflections of varied stakeholders, farmer diaries and survey data procured in 2016 and 2019. This method...

Objectives of the Study General Objective. The case study aims to contribute to the enhancement of the exchange of knowledge and best practices on family farming and agroecology relevant initiatives and institutional context and contribute to the implementation of the Programme Priority Areas (PPA) BP1: Innovation for sustainable agriculture production...

The National Gender Profile of Agriculture and Rural Livelihoods Cambodia provides findings of an assessment of men’s and women’s roles, gender division of labour and gender gaps, including women’s needs and constraints in the agriculture and rural development sectors in Cambodia. It also presents findings from the assessment of policies...

In the Mekong Region, agroecological approaches provide a niche alternative to the dominant traditional or intensive farming systems. We conducted a synthesis of current evidence on agroecological interventions by means of a systematic literature review and mapping of case studies in Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar. The majority of...

For Ung Bun, a 39-year-old fisherman from Cambodia’s southern Kep province, the days when he would come home with plentiful catches of flower crabs appear to be long gone. Pulling in his net one recent morning, he found just one crustacean. Ung Bun dropped the crab – a male that was...

The agricultural sector, particularly in low-income countries, is facing multiple challenges including climate change, soaring food, fuel and fertilizer prices, biodiversity loss, and lack of adequate investment in agricultural development. With world hunger levels on the rise,1 an urgent move away from industrial agriculture and intensive farming practices is essential...

The Global Environment Facility’s Capacity-building Initiative for Transparency (CBIT) supports developing countries to build institutional and technical capacities to meet the Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF) requirements. This final evaluation assessed the first cluster of the FAO CBIT projects – national projects in Cambodia, Mongolia and Papua New Guinea, and the...

Smallholder farmers are important food producers globally. However, they often struggle to meet international standards on trade and related plant health requirements. Bridging the gap between smallholder farms and the global market is now more important than ever. Through South-South and Triangular Cooperation (SSTC) programmes, producers, exporters and technical experts are...

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) has announced that fishing for seahorses and selling them in markets is now illegal. Anyone caught fishing for seahorses or selling them will face fines and legal action.

Cassava has become a ‘must have’ crop for many Cambodian smallholders; yet, the market is volatile and yields are uneven. Drawing on long-term fieldwork in Kampong Thom and Ratanakiri provinces, we analyse how farmers cope with volatility. We argue that multiple pathways have emerged: some farmers have ceased producing cassava;...

Hos Salop’s days always began very early. She would cook breakfast for her husband and her three-year-old grandchild before working on her family farm in the village of Pongro in northwest Cambodia. She collected vegetables, fed the chickens and a pig, cleaned her house and dropped her grandchild off at...

Insect pests are a serious problem for rice farmers in Cambodia, threatening livelihoods and food security. To protect their yields, farmers are dependent on broad-spectrum pesticides, which has led to a pesticide ‘lock-in’ scenario. Our study aimed to better understand farmers’ current pest management practices and the underlying knowledge and...

Women and men play important roles throughout the fish value chain, and also for the conservation of aquatic resources. However, there is little recognition of women’s valuable contribution to the fisheries sector. Women glean and collect seafood from the mangroves. Women clean and process the fish. Women sell fish products...

After a particularly complicated and violent period in its history under the Khmer Rouge regime, Cambodia can boast of having halved its poverty rate between 2014 and 2022. Even if extreme poverty is still far from being eradicated today, this progress proves that it is not inevitable.