Better Understanding Constraints to Smallholder Adoption of Agricultural Technologies from the Perspective of Knowledge Providers in Cambodia

Rice is Cambodia's primary agricultural crop, occupying over 70% of the total crop area. Despite a doubling of production over the last five years and significant technical advances in tillage, direct seeding, use of better quality seed, increased fertiliser and agro-chemical use, and mechanical harvesting, the industry compares unfavourably with the world rice export leaders" Thailand and Vietnam. This presents as a major constraint to the realisation of the Cambodian Government's rice export policy goal of fivefold growth by 2015. At a 2012 ACIAR thematic consultation workshop for the ASEM program, involving 15 Cambodian research and development agencies, there was a view that despite good development of technical inputs by research agencies and good technology transfer by donor development agencies, changes at the farm level had been limited. However, a short scoping mission in November 2012 by project personnel Dr Kep Coughlan and Mr Terry O'Sullivan, suggested that this was not necessarily the case. This mission concluded that most farmers were adopting new technologies and making rapid and significant change. The reason for the overall poor rice industry performance appeared to centre around the inappropriate application of new technology. This appeared to be a direct result of a poor connection (or interface) between the developers of recommended agricultural technologies (known in Cambodia as Good Agricultural Practice" GAP or Local Best Practice - LBP) and the farmer users. The scoping mission also observed that the extension interfaces with farmers were now more complex because of the increasing involvement of input supply companies, contractors, NGOs and Vietnamese traders in provision of agricultural advice. AusAID's Cambodia Australia Agricultural Extension Project Phase II (CAAEP II) exposed farmers' hunger for knowledge which was reflected in very high adoption rates in 36 technical areas within animal health, small crop production, rice production and animal production. This was studied and adoption rates verified independently as recently as 2006. This suggests an unusual dynamic is at work with respect to farmer innovation in Cambodia. Based on this assessment, it was concluded that the issues of adoption within the now more complex extension interfaces warranted further study.