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| Harvest program is helping 100,000 rural Cambodian households living around Tonle Sap Lake to improve their livelihood. Photo supplied. |
This week, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Cambodia would like to highlight the “Cambodia HARVEST” program and its partners Feed the Future and Fintrac Inc which are on the process of implementing the program.
“Cambodia HARVEST is an integrated food security and climate change program supported by the American people through the U.S. Feed the Future and Global Climate Change initiatives. The program helps reduce poverty and malnutrition by diversifying and increasing food production and income for up to 100,000 rural Cambodian households,” wrote USAID Cambodia on its Facebook page.
It added that the program focuses on finding solutions for agricultural poor productivity, post-harvest losses, malnutrition, lack of market access, environment degradation, and the effects of climate change on vulnerable rural inhabitants.
USAID added that the program is implemented in dozens of communes in the provinces around Tonle Sap Lake such as Battambang, Kampong Thom, Pursat, Siem Reap where the percentage of poor household is high.
According to Cambodia HARVEST’s website, the program is aiming to increase the incomes for the 100,000 households living around Tonle Sap Lake. This also means to increase economic benefits for 283,500 people.
The development of different activities to generate income for 8,500 “extreme poor” households is also another goal of the program.
Moreover the program is taking in account the diversification of cropping system for 56,000 households in order to generate about $40 million in the sales of agricultural products.
To deliver technical assistance and business services to smallholders, Cambodia HARVEST has hired companies and NGOs to do the job.
On the other hand, all initiatives carried out by the program are well aligned with the Royal Government of Cambodia’s national strategies for food security.
In a view to expand the outreach, impact and sustainability of the program, Cambodia HARVEST is cooperating with many researchers and consultants such as Auburn University, Faura and Flora International, Institute of International Education, Aruna Technology, Advancing Engineering Consultants, and Emerging Market Consultanting.
In its newsletter issued earlier this year, Feed the Future mentioned that, in the field of action, to strengthen rice value chain, the program established public –private alliances with 11 small-scale agribusinesses in order to improve competitiveness and expand the market for more smallholder farmers in the Kingdom.
The approach is to give the opportunities to private sector to participate in improving livelihoods, economic growth, and increased access to technology.
For this reason, $2.4 million in co-investments were given the alliances to help private sector partners to install new equipment and to deliver training.
“These improvements benefit thousands of farmers and small businesses throughout the rice, aquaculture and horticulture value chains,” wrote Feed the Future in its newsletter.
On the other hand, to improve access to capital for poor famers, Feed the Future has created a system of mutual funding, the so called “Community-Owned Saving Group.”
“In Cambodia, microfinance institutions require land for collateral, and high-interest lenders put credit out of reach for most resource-poor people in rural areas. Recognizing this problem, a Feed the Future project helped establish 146 community-based savings groups in remote, rural locations,” wrote Feed the Future in its newsletter issued last month.
Furthermore, Feed the Future has explained that members of the community-based saving group could elect their own leaders and establish the financial structure lending rules collectively. However, group members have the obligation to contribute money to a saving fund. In return, they could apply for small loans from that fund.
The loans should go to the activities supporting local economy. The loans are granted to group’s member by consensus and the interest rates are far lower than those of microfinance institutions or informal lenders.
“Providing a steady and reliable source of capital encourages the development of small businesses and increases a household’s income, which in turn boosts food security,” wrote Feed the Future in its last month newsletter.
Besides Feed the Future, USAID is also directly contributing to the development of Cambodia. Actually, in July, USAID announced its new project, the so-called The Cambodian Civil Society Strengthening (CCSS) project, aiming to strengthen the capacity of civil society and grassroots networks in the Kingdom.
The CCSS is a five years project with $9 million of funding from the USAID. The project is helping civil society to improve its management structures regarding boards of directors, organizational lines of communication, standard operation procedures, and human resource management systems.
The CCSS is also offering small grants to solve problem of land rights, to help victims of gender based violence, to support the protection of the natural resources in Cambodia, and to give fund for different research activities such as public opinion polls and social economic assessments in order to help civil society to better deliver its services.
USAID was created by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 in order to help to reduce extreme global poverty and to enable and strengthen democratic societies around the world.
USAID also creates markets and trade partners for the United States, and fosters good will abroad such as promotion of shared economic prosperity, strengthening good governance, protection of human rights, improvement of global health, food security and agriculture, improvement of environmental sustainability, improvement of education, and humanitarian assistance in natural and man-made disasters.
Since its inception, USAID has invested about $1billion for Cambodia’s development.
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