Cambodia’s rice bowl remains half full

The Kingdom’s rice sector, already challenged by climate change, survives under the throes of a symptomatic, disjointed adaptation and mitigation effort

DUST swirls in the distance of vast rice fields flanking north-connecting National Road 6. It signals the start of the dry season in Cambodia. There is no human activity, as the heat is stifling.

March to June are the hottest months. The balmy days can hit 43 Celcius, triggering the brisk sale of air conditioners and fans in the cities. In the provinces though, farming communities brace for the harsh weather.

Every year, the drought is said to be longer than the previous year although rainfall is projected to rise in wet seasons. Most times the outcome is different.

In Toul Chreav village in Pursat province, traditional rice farmer Say Ny prepares for the solo planting season that begins in May.

He remains placid on this year’s performance, although last year’s harvest yielded good results due to higher rainfall. “I will leave it to nature to determine output,” he said.

Nearby, a long canal project is taking off. It is the first he has seen despite talks of it in previous years. The promise of uninterrupted supply of water is alluring, yet Ny remains sceptical.

“I have never seen an agriculture infrastructure built here. We have solely depended on rainfall to feed our fields for generations,” said the 52-year-old farmer who owns 10ha of rice fields, inherited from his ancestors.

His scepticism has a deeper inference.

Agriculture infrastructures have been built in farming provinces, with many in the pipeline but these architectures lack insight.

Seen as game changers to rice production, with the likelihood of raising output, irrigation canals are only so good as being connected to a water source.

As of 2008, rice farming constituted 2.6 million hectares out of 3.31 million hectares of arable land.

Permanent crops and rubber plantations made up less than one million hectares.

Out of the total land, only seven to eight per cent is irrigated while 10 per cent is supplementary irrigated. The remaining 80 per cent relies on rainfall.

In 2017, 28.5 per cent of the national climate budget was spent on irrigation, the highest allocation compared to other climate-related segments such as road improvement, climate-affected livelihood, and climate disaster preparedness and management.

Irrigation and water supply fa ll under t he Ministr y of Water Resources and Meteorolog y (MoWRAM), which soa ked up the largest funds at 37 per cent of the budget t hat year, said a report produced by The NGO Forum on Cambodia entitled Cambodia’s Citizens Climate Budget for 2017.

“Water is the biggest problem due to extreme weather. Rice farms cannot survive drought. Animals also suffer.

“So, the authorities dug out irrigation canals but the water has since dried because it was not connected to a water source.

“This is prevalent in many provinces,” said Keo Keang, an independent consultant for the farming and climate change industry.

From her observation, some 80 per cent of the community she worked with usually leave their provinces to take up construction work during the dry season to make ends meet, and return later in the rainy season.

“Many farmers simply give up because they cannot cope,” said the former president for US-based Heifer International Cambodia, an organisation that women farmers.

Year-on-year, the figure fluctuates on unpredictable weather. Last year, rice production totalled 10.6 million tonnes – marginally higher than 10 million tonnes in 2018.

However, this data is a rough estimate procured from various sources, as the authorities claim its disclosure is sensitive, even though the rice sector forms the nation’s second largest export market.

The fact that the farming industry teeters on the onslaught of climate change with secretive figures, questionable budget allocations for climate projects and the lack of initiative to see them through, is somewhat damning.

In Cambodia, about 75 per cent of the population is involved in the agriculture sector. The sector contributed supports 32.1 per cent to the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2011.

Having said that, the Climate Change Strategic Plan (2014-2023) identifies agriculture as being the most affected by it, with 90 per cent of losses from extreme events related to crop harvest failure.

And this impact is closely connected to water resources shortage.

It also threatens Cambodia’s food security, and hits on the poverty level as crop damage and lower wages can push the highly indebted communityfurther below the line.

Given the gravity of the impact, the government has been gradually increasing climate change expenditure.

Its proportion to the GDP, the expenditure rose marginally to one per cent in 2017 from 0.9 per cent a year ago, underpinned by larger external and domestic fundings.

In absolute terms, total climate expenditure rose 23 per cent to 912 billion riel ($221 million) in 2017 from 770 billion riel in 2016.

Unfortunately, only 10 per cent was spent on the agriculture and fisheries sectors.

Despite the increased allocation, the sum is paltry compared to the total national budget of 20,556 billion riel in 2017, and when balanced against the actual benefit to combating climate change.

The Ministry of Economy and Finance’s Climate Public Expenditure Review 2017 (CPER) revealed that once climate change relevance weights are applied to the budget, it only constituted 3.2 per cent of the total public expenditure, the same level in 2016. It dipped from 4.3 per cent in 2015.

Simply put, 70 per cent of that total budget was spent without climate change benefits, 27 per cent with partial