Agriculture & Agro-Processing

CAPRED aims to foster a more sustainable and prosperous agricultural sector in Cambodia by empowering small-scale producers, enhancing market competitiveness, and improving the livelihoods of farming households.

Our work in agriculture and agro-processing focuses on 6 priority crops: rice, cashew, banana, mango, cassava and vegetables. These cover more than 90% of Cambodia’s total cropping area and are dominated by small-scale growers. They offer enormous potential in increased sales and productivity; export growth; import substitution; and gender equality, disability and social inclusion (GEDSI) benefits.

We adopt an integrated value chain or market system approach for each crop from market (upstream) to production (downstream). Each market is made up of a series of transactions governed by supply and demand.

We examine market needs and work backwards to improve and strengthen the supply chain.

MARKET SYSTEM APPROACH

Strengthening upstream and downstream sectors

In our model, the upstream sector covers processing, compliance, labelling and/or packaging, marketing and distribution before products go to market. This sector contributes to skilled employment, technical expertise and quality standards. Strengthening this sector can increase value addition, competitiveness and market access that in turn contributes to employment, economic growth, production and crop diversification.

The downstream sector covers primary agricultural production activities. These include research and development of better farming techniques or machinery, climate- or pest-resilient seeds, sustainable practices, improved irrigation systems, farming and harvesting crops, and enhanced post-harvest handling and storage facilities. Strengthening the downstream sector has a positive ripple effect on the entire supply chain.

For Cambodia, the key challenge is to grow its value addition sector rather than sell raw produce to Thailand and Vietnam who then benefit from processing it themselves. Value addition requires a significant improvement in processing efficiency, affordable processing equipment, and use of wastage, ensuring that farming households receive better prices for their products and can rely on stable market access.

Latest resources

See our latest resources from across the CAPRED program.

Provincial Investment Plan for Piped Water Supply in Cambodia

This publication has been funded by the Australian Government through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

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Cambodia has ambitious renewable energy plans, which includes 70 per cent of its energy coming from renewable sources by 2030. Australia is committed to working with Cambodia to support its clean energy transition and meet its goals. Recently, Australia supported a delegation to visit Australia to learn about our experience in integrating variable renewable energy. We spoke with Dr Darith, Deputy Chief of the National Control Center at Electricité du Cambodge, who was part of the delegation to hear about his experience. Check out what he had to say about the visit.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for 70% of jobs in Cambodia. However, only about 13% are formalised, hindering productivity, access to finance and markets, and government support. Australia, through the CAPRED program, collaborated with the Ministry of Industry, Science, Technology & Innovation (MISTI) to develop a digital public service portal for SMEs, handicrafts and industry to apply for licenses. This platform helps foster business formalisation, improve enterprise capacity and productivity, and promote economic growth and increased foreign direct investment. To ensure the online platform’s applicability and usability, CAPRED and MISTI conducted a Consultation and User Testing workshop with representatives from SMEs, handicrafts, and industries. The resulting inputs and feedback were integrated into the platform’s development ahead of the June 2024 launch. Check out the workshop video to learn more.