Community-Based Agriculture
In the Cardamom Mountains, many landless Cambodians struggled to survive—poaching wildlife, illegally cutting down trees and scraping to provide food, shelter, education and health care for themselves and their children. In 1990, 73 percent of Cambodia’s land area was covered by forest. By 2007, that number had dropped to 57 percent. People in the Cardamoms depended heavily on the destruction of the forests to prepare fertile farmland and provide food security for their family.
The Community Agriculture Development Program (CADP) at Sovanna BaitongToday, with the help of Wildlife Alliance, villagers have settled in a new community—Sovanna Baitong, or “Golden Green”. They have received land tenure, become part of a community-wide irrigation project, and have been trained in sustainable farming techniques. Their incomes are growing and they now have access to education, health care, and a revolving loan fund to boost agricultural production and local small businesses. Above all, they have achieved a stability they have never known before.
Families grow vegetables and rice for their own consumption, and they grow cash crops to sell in local and regional markets. Training in modern farming techniques ensures that harvests are spread out, providing income throughout the year. A marketing committee sees that the crops are transported and sold in local marketplaces, but the produce has become so popular that people from around the province have started traveling to the village to buy produce directly from the source.
Others—primarily women—are employed in a reforestation program that is reconnecting forest corridors that link important animal habitats. Empowered with regular income, these women will plant over one million trees and receive a steady income to support the health and well-being of their families.
The village is thriving with a new local school, a community fund to help supplement teachers’ pay as well as promote other community-wide expenses, a health clinic, and a growing small-business sector. Wildlife Alliance is working closely with the community to assess current and future needs and respond with sustainable solutions to empower families and protect the surrounding forests.
In time, this program will be fully self-sustainable, ensuring families can preserve the forests around them and thrive for generations to come.
Sovanna Baitong Volunteers
The Community Agriculture Development Program (CADP) has always aimed at sustainablity, with the people of Sovanna Baitong eventually being able to thrive without direct assistance from Wildlife Alliance. The people of Sovanna Baitong have made amazing strides in cultivation and marketing since the creation of the program seven years ago. Because of the corresponding rise in income, Wildlife Alliance has been reducing some of subsidies as the people become better able to succeed on their own.
But as the village moves towards independence there is still the need to foster cohesion in a community comprised of people who once lived in isolation in the forest. It is therefore necessary for wider community development in order to help create a sense of unity and enrichment, so that the people of Sovanna Baitong will feel confident about the new life they have created. There is also a need to develop additional business initiatives to enhance their income, so local people can add entrepreneurship to agriculture.
To address these issues and to ease the community’s transition to independence, a volunteer program was created at the end of 2010. Since that time volunteers have been assisting the community in numerous areas, including English lessons, the development of pilot businesses in baking and confectionary, the construction of communal fish ponds, and the creation a community space where people young and old can gather for arts projects, social gatherings, or even to get some martial arts training.
To learn more about our volunteer program, or how you might be able to lend your
support and expertise to the people of Sovanna Baitong, please send an email to wildlife.vo@gmail.com.
