Toward an agro-ecological transition in the uplands of Cambodia

Since 2010, the PADAC project tried to break the maize boom-bust cycle through conservation agriculture (CA) alternatives. The lessons from the project that intervened both during the boom and the post-boom periods could help design appropriate intervention mechanisms and identify new avenues toward an agro-ecological transition away from the dead ends of the crop boom cycles.

5.2.1 Lessons learned from the 2009-2013 and 2014-2018 period

The PADAC project applied the DATE approach (Husson et al., 2016) by conducting an agrarian diagnosis (Bertrand, 2011) and implementing field experiments based on technical references developed in Kampong Cham Province (Central East Region) from 2004-2009 (Boulakia et al., 2010). A range of direct-seeding, mulch-based cropping systems (Séguy et al., 2012) have been evaluated for the main annual crops with cover/relay crops and needed

experimental fields and in the pilot extension network. However, the results did not meet the initial expectations of reversing the process of soil fertility depletion due to a number of important challenges. In Kong et al., (n.d.), we translated these challenges into lessons for the exploration of development pathways and intervention mechanisms towards sustainable intensification.

One of the main challenges encountered was the fast changing market demand from pulse crops to maize on the pioneer front, and then from maize to cassava by the end of the maize boom. The market demand has always been a key driver of the agro-industrial sector. For instance, the remarkable increase of cassava cultivated areas in Cambodia from 2010s was also related to the drop of production due to the outbreak of mealybug in Thailand (Wyckhuys et al., 2018). Changing market opportunities become an issue when the rapid changes in the cropping and production systems are quicker than the minimum required time for evaluating environmental performances and impacts. Even at demonstration sites, where the project was designing diversified cropping systems with a large number of crops, it was difficult for researchers to have enough reactivity to follow the rapid changes in the cropping systems. The window of opportunities to adapt alternative cropping systems is extremely narrow (Castella, 2012).

Despite the subsidies provided by the project to buffer the risks (R. Kong et al., 2016) for innovative farmers who invested in crop diversification (main crops and cover/relay crops) these farmers were reluctant to apply new technical packages as long as the profitability of their overall farming systems was still acceptable. The farmers perceived these practices (i.e. canceling disc plowing, use of cover crops, and chemical fertilizers) as disruptive as compared to conventional crop management. They would only consider adopting innovations that allowed a clear, visible decrease in labor inputs and/or production costs with, as a direct result, a higher profitability of land and labor. The project adapted to these individual decision-making strategies by changing its approach to support innovation from subsidizing a full technical package to providing a no-till planting service associated with an advisory service from 2013 onward. The project staff played the role of a private service provider for sowing maize with a no-till planter and for providing technical backstopping. Maintaining the dynamics of the farmer network around elements of CA innovation i.e. no-till planter service and provision of a range of technical options on a volunteer basis maintained a learning ground for the farmers and other local actors.

The lack of development operations jointly designed and implemented with local actors were definitively a main constraint to achieve higher impacts. This advocates for maintaining on-farm experimental fields to play the role of “technological beacon,” where key co-designed cropping systems are compared with one another over several years, alongside past and present farming practices. Such an approach would demonstrate the performances of the innovative cropping systems: (i) after the conversion, when soil conditions gradually improve; and (ii) across varying climatic conditions during successive years.

5.2.2 Lessons learned and perspectives from the RADA game

The use of role-playing games revealed the role of the PADAC project in changing farmers’ perceptions and social learning which could hardly be investigated through individual interviews or group discussions. For example, we showed that the willingness of farmers to adopt CA-based cropping systems strongly relates to their perception of technical and economic risks and declining productivity (Chapter 4). Clearly, the quality of the participatory processes was linked to their understanding of the benefits of soil conservation practices. The RADA game also revealed the need for more holistic approaches to innovation, notably to integrate a larger diversity of options addressing all components of farming systems. There is a need to generate and integrate new technical and organizational knowledge in order to negotiate solutions, explore opportunities and learn in different combined and integrated ways, thus facilitating the emergence of collective actions (van Mierlo et al., 2017).

The RADA game did not explicitly explore scenarios including agroecological technical and organizational options for the future. Taking advantage of the current diversification process in the upland landscapes (combination of annual and perennial crops), a number of agroecological options, such as agroforestry systems and crop-livestock integration could be tested to improve agronomic efficiency, while investing in natural resource management (Leakey, 2017; Maikhuri et al., 1997; Shi and Li, 1999). However, there are no one-size-fits-all or free-fit innovations. Studies on agricultural innovation promote co- production of knowledge to stimulate innovation niches and to foster the transition to sustainable intensification (Systems et al., 2018). The RADA game could help explore such transition scenarios by mobilizing the lessons learnt collectively since the PADAC period.

The results of the RADA game (Chapter 4) confirmed the positive impact of the PADAC project on (i) soft skills development in relation to technical knowledge (i.e. soil conservation, risks management) and (ii) organizational capacity with fire control as an example. Even though the numbers of CA households and hectares are low, farmers evolved in their understanding of CA and changed their mindsets and attitudes in relation to boom crops when compared with the non-CA farmers/villages. The work of the PADAC team allowed for the emergence of a hybrid network of researchers, extension staff and farmers through their joint experiences on a large number of crops, cropping patterns and tools they still mobilize several years after. The technical skills built over the years represent a rich asset for the Cambodian agriculture sector that is valued through different learning approaches: e-learning (www.iperca.org) and capacity development through the newly created CA national network (https://ali-sea.org).

discuss and explore solutions. As recent migrants in a pioneer front region, farmers tend to work and decide individually as they share different backgrounds and histories. Mostly, they mimic the land use decisions and farming practices of their successful or influential neighbors through observation, without discussion or collective dialogue. As long as farmers remain in the mindset of commodity production (Bernstein, 1977), a higher degree of farm diversification is difficult to achieve. Other actors of the value-chains should drive the change toward agroecology practices by allocating a price premium to agroecological products. Without any acknowledgement of the quality of agroecology products, farmers may follow the trends of new boom crops associated with a land concentration process. The increase in orchard areas questions not only the durability of the market demand but also that of labor and water resource availability. Additional studies should address these expected changes and how to deal with a twofold objective of providing water access for residents and water for agricultural purposes as well as with labor requirements for the production and post-harvest operations and the current outflow of labor for migration work. The RADA game could be potentially scaled up to village and commune levels using participatory theater approaches (Botta et al., 2017) to raise awareness of land degradation, adverse consequences of boom and bust cycles, as well as introducing alternative systems.