Farmers Seeds Resilience: Boosting Local Rice Seed Systems in Cambodia and Asia
Implemented by the Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA) and Farmer and Nature Net Association
Funded by the FFORA
Background
Strengthening the capacity of smallholder farmers’ organizations in the Global South through long-term partnerships is essential for addressing the interconnected challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, and food insecurity. These partnerships are vital to achieving the climate mitigation, adaptation, and resilience goals outlined in the Paris Agreement. Smallholder farmers, numbering over 1.5 billion globally, play a critical role in these efforts, contributing not only to climate solutions but also to broader goals of sustainability, equity, and resilience. Supporting these farmers to upscale regenerative, nature-based agricultural practices that integrate biodiverse crops offers multiple benefits. It enables them to mitigate the effects of climate change, adapt to changing conditions, and enhance food security while contributing to the conservation of biodiversity.
Across Asia, approximately 400 million people are engaged in rice farming on 144 million smallholder farms, most of which are less than two hectares in size. Southeast Asia, a major rice-producing region, plays a pivotal role in the global rice economy. The region accounts for 40% of global rice exports while also having high internal consumption, underscoring rice’s centrality in the daily lives of its population. In Southeast Asia, rice is the single most important staple, providing up to 50% of the calorie intake for many people.
Cambodia offers a specific example of rice’s significance. Rice is grown on about 3.6 million hectares of the country’s total cultivated land, making it the dominant crop. As Cambodia’s main staple food, rice contributes approximately 25% of the national GDP and provides employment to around 3 million people, highlighting its crucial role in both food security and economic stability. Over recent decades, the Cambodian rice sector has expanded significantly, emerging as an important contributor to food security and an increasingly vital component of the export economy. Rice paddy ecosystems are rich in biological diversity, which plays a crucial role in maintaining ecosystem processes, ensuring food security, and preserving cultural heritage. These ecosystems, often closely linked to wetland habitats, are key to sustaining the natural balance between agricultural production and environmental health. Recognizing the importance of this balance, significant efforts are now being made by farmers and key stakeholders to promote biodiversity-friendly and agroecological practices in large-scale rice production landscapes. Farmers in Cambodia, in particular, are beginning to explore diversified rice-based cropping systems that minimize or eliminate the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Challenge
Despite the progress being made, Cambodia’s rice production faces numerous challenges that threaten both its sustainability and the livelihoods of farmers. The drive for higher yields has led to the widespread use of modern rice varieties that are designedprimarily for productivity, often at the expense of other important traits such as nutritional value, stress tolerance, and flavour. It is estimated that 75% of Cambodia’s traditional rice varieties, which possess unique and valuable characteristics, havebeen lost due to the focus on yield-maximizing modern varieties. This loss has profound implications for both nutrition and resilience. Modern rice varieties are more vulnerable to climate change, with farmers increasingly facing shortened planting windows due to the growing frequency of droughts and floods. These extreme weather events contribute to lower yields, exacerbating food insecurity and undermining farmers’ livelihoods.
In response to falling yields, many farmers have turned to increasing their use of chemical inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. While these inputs can provide short-term boosts in productivity, they come with significant long-term costs. The rising prices of these inputs reduce farmers’ net incomes, while their overuse leads to a range of environmental problems, including soil degradation and the decline of ecosystem services. Cambodia’s rice production potential is further constrained by a lack of high-quality seeds and limited capacity for local seed production. Most seed varieties currently available to farmers only allow for one or two harvests per year, resulting in low productivity levels that threaten both local food security and income from export markets.
Adding to these challenges, Cambodia’s heavy reliance on imported Vietnamese seeds creates vulnerabilities. Should Vietnam develop patents on these seeds, access could become restricted, leaving Cambodian farmers with fewer, less resilient seed options. This dependence on external seed sources also limits the potential for local farmers to cultivate traditional varieties that are better suited to their environmental conditions and have higher market value.
The overuse of chemical inputs has further ecological consequences. Unsustainable intensification practices have led to the degradation of soil health, with long-term use of chemical fertilizers causing soil compaction and the loss of organic matter. The decline in soil fertility also pushes farmers to expand their cultivated land into ecologically sensitive areas, contributing to habitat loss. In Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Biosphere Reserve’s, for example, nearly one-third of the natural habitat has been lost, with rice cultivation now covering half of the floodplain. This expansion threatens the region’s biodiversity, particularly its wetland forests, which provide critical ecosystem services.
Solution
Amid these challenges, the promotion of premium traditional rice varieties offers a viable path forward. These varieties, such as Sen Kra Uob, Rumduol, and Srangae, are well-suited to both local and export markets. They offer multiple benefits, including greater resilience to climate change, enhanced biodiversity (both in terms of crop varieties and soil health), and improved yields. Traditional rice varieties typically have shorter crop rotations, allowing for 3-4 harvests per year. This increased frequency of harvests translates into more regular and higher incomes for farmers while reducing the need for chemical inputs. Moreover, these varieties are recognized by the European Union for import, which opens up opportunities for farmers to access international markets, further diversifying their income sources and improving livelihoods.
By increasing the production of traditional rice seeds, Cambodia can reduce its dependence on imported Vietnamese seeds and mitigate the risks associated with potential patents on these external varieties. Supporting local seed production will allow farmers to access a wider range of resilient seed varieties, enhancing their self-sufficiency and increasing financial returns. This shift will also support the development of more genetically diverse rice production systems, which are crucial for enhancing the nutritional value of rice and improving food security. Cambodia’s national rice export policy, aimed at increasing the supply of high-quality paddy for export to higher-value markets, aligns with these efforts, ensuring that traditional varieties can compete in both local and international markets.
The adoption of climate-resilient seeds that require less water and fewer inputs will also have broader environmental benefits. These seeds help reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers, improving soil health and reducing the pressure on farmers to expandtheir cultivated land into ecologically sensitive areas. The traditional varieties being promoted by Farmersand Nature Net, a Cambodian based farmers organisation, are openly pollinatedseeds that farmers can reproduce, very well adapted to local growingconditions and easily respond particularly well to organic fertilizers, which support the growth of beneficial soil organisms.
However, the successful adoption of these traditional varieties will require more than just the availability of seeds. It is essential to strengthen the organizational capacities of local seed producing cooperatives like CamSeed and farmer organizations to accelerate the uptake of these resilient rice varieties. By enhancing the knowledge, learning, and organizational skills of these groups, farmers can better understand the benefits of traditional varieties and how to integrate them into their farming systems. Building strong communication pathways and networks will be key to raising awareness, improving coordination, and ensuring the widespread adoption of biodiversity-friendly farming practices. With the right support, these efforts can help farmers achieve higher yields, improve food security, increase access to both local and international markets, and contribute to the conservation and restoration of biodiversity in Cambodia.
Theory of change
By fostering local leadership, building capacity, and providing access to expert knowledge, this project will help drive the commercial success of sustainable, community-driven seed systems, responding to the challenges and supporting locally driven solutions in Cambodia, that can be shared across the region. This will be done through:
- Support small scale farmer in integrating sustainable practicesinto rice seed supply systems thereby boosting agricultural productivityand food securitybut also for preserving the environment and supporting rural livelihoods. By raising awareness, developing the evidence, and providing specialist support forfarmers on what sustainable actions are needed for biodiverse, organic, water efficient, climate resilient, and socially equitable seed production systems, the aim is to create a seed supply framework that ensures both food security and environmental sustainability for future generations.
- Support the commercialisationof the rice seed supply chain by improving access to profitable local and international markets for small scale farmers with a focus on developing sustainable seed systems that integrate diverse, under-utilized species and climate-resilient practices to unlock new opportunities. By strengthening technical, and administrative capacities of farmers organisations, providing the right infrastructure and supporting long-term seed production and marketing plans the aim is to ensure consistent access toincome generating local and international markets are accessible in the long-term.
- Building national and regional communication pathways, and knowledge exchange strategies, to share technical and market knowledge, will enable the adaptation andoptimisationof solutions to the local specificities of the communities to improve result.
The goal of the project is that knowledge, systems and structures are in place to enable long-term access to improved and betterqualityrice seed varieties, with enhanced technical, organisational and business skills business in place for a continued and wider transition tomore resilient rice farming systems.
Activities
COMPONENT 1: EXPANDING THE PRODUCTION AND COMMERCIALISATION OF A VARIETY OF LOCAL HIGH QUALITY FARMERS SEEDS
The increase of local rice seed supply will be done by raising awareness and enhancing the technical, organisational and financial capacity of seed producers to transition to local seed production and equipping them with essential knowledge and technologies on local rice seed production. In Cambodia the local seed producing cooperative, CamSeed, has limited resources to implement their plans for scaling up seed production and the type and quality of seed to meet high market demands. This component will support CamSeed, in partnership with FNN, through developing training materials and conducting workshops on seed production to improve their own local seed producers’ practices to increase quality seed to increase rice yield and food security. It will also help strengthen local organisations both producing and buying seeds through enhancing the capacity of the organisation to manage the financial and business aspects of seed production, whilst helping build the require infrastructure and financial resourcing required for increased seed production.
COMPONENT 2: INCREASING THE DEMAND OF LOCAL FARMERS SEED AND TRADITIONAL RICE SPECIES
The expansion of the market for local farmers rice seed will be done by building the evidence base and raising awareness of seed and rice producers, mills, input suppliers, national & international buyers on the use of traditional rice that increase the rice production efficiency, its resilience to climate change and its contribution to improved nutrition and food security. With the resulting increase in demand for the rice leading to a similar increased in demand for the local farmer’sseed.
COMPONENT 3: UPSCALING GOOD PRACTICES TO DEVELOP OR STRENGTHEN FARMER SEEDS COOPERATIVES
AFA, with its millions of smallholder members in sixteen countries of Asia, has extensive experience in conducting in person and online sharing of experiences. Farmer-to-farmer exchanges are a powerful way to improve agricultural practices because they leverage the practical experience and local knowledge of those directly engaged in farming. These exchanges foster collaboration, allowing farmers to share successful techniques, troubleshoot common issues, and adapt innovations to fit local conditions. This peer-to-peer learning can be more relatable and actionable than top-down advice, leading to more effective and sustainable improvements in farming practices.