WATCH: Formation of Conservation Agriculture and Sustainable Intensification Consortium in Cambodia

11.05.2021
Cambodia Conservation Agriculture and Sustainable Intensification Consortium (CASIC) is a national mechanism established to collaborate and coordinate with a network of organizations that are implementing activities related to Conservation Agriculture (CA) in Cambodia such as marketing, research, policy and service delivery etc. by promoting CA/SI farming systems, creating demand for CA machinery and implements, increase the diversification of crops, the accessibility of cover crops, and the participation of the private sector to meet the needs.

CASIC acts as a platform to promote CA/SI farming systems through knowledge management, influencing to policy makers, coordination and networking and promotions. These functions will support in promoting CA and will lead to demand creation of CA services. This increment of demand will lead to increase interest from the private sectors and other market actors’ engagement, such as more innovation and uptake of CA/SI practices and related machinery. The interest and investment from the private sectors will lead to provide CA services to more and more farmers implementing CA practices. The use of CA practices will result in improvement in soil fertility, accelerate in quality and quantity of their yields, consequently leading to income increase for the farmers and ultimately poverty alleviation.

The vision of CASIC is to be a well-established platform with a vast network of organizations that are working on the CA issues in Cambodia, e.g. markets, research, policies, service provision etc. To achieve this, a platform that can initially bring together all the market actors involved in CA to promote CA practices, create demand for the required CA machinery and implements, plant diversity and availability/access to seed of cover crops etc. and get private sector engagement to fulfil those needs.