The Cardamom Mountains of Cambodia have historically been home to some of the most pristine, contiguous tropical rainforests in mainland Asia. Cambodia has seen dramatic changes in the last fifty years, with genocide, heavy fighting and a long period of civil war. Many forest-dependent families were deprived of their land and their working tools were confiscated. This lets them survive only on forest slash-and-burn cultivation and trapping and selling wildlife.
International criminal networks flourished, selling the wildlife on China’s black markets. Between 2000 and 2002, 28 tigers were killed and 37 elephants slaughtered. The forest was burning everywhere. Poverty was rampant, and families were stuck in the cycle of destitution and environmental destruction.
In 2002, when Wildlife Alliance’s team was tasked by the government of Cambodia to protect the Southern Cardamom Mountains, it was to stop the rampant deforestation caused by rogue soldiers who had lost their jobs and were grabbing state land (land-grabbing) to resell it.
A corridor of criminality emerged following the construction of a highway connecting Cambodia and Thailand. Encroaching perpendicularly from the highway, loggers and poachers were burning up to 300-600 hectares of forest each month. The Royal Government of Cambodia asked Wildlife Alliance for technical assistance to stop these rogue soldiers and unethical businessmen.
An inter-ministerial committee was created, led by the Forestry Administration, and Wildlife Alliance was given its mandate to protect the forest and wildlife, and help the people. Several government ministries comprised the committee, and, with the authority of the Forestry Administration, Wildlife Alliance helped to hire, train and equip law enforcement patrol units to enforce government regulations throughout the area along the highway. Apprehending lawbreakers is an inherent part of law enforcement, but beyond that, these patrols represented the presence of the state’s authority and intentions. This was important as the area had been left unsupervised and unchecked by the central government for many years, due to the war.
Within just the first nine months of operations, the patrols were able to confiscate 401 stolen forest plots and return them to the state. Elephant poaching was reduced by 98% and tiger killings by half. The most wanted tiger killer in the country, Ngor Nun, was arrested and put in prison for seven years.
In 2003, with strict leadership from the provincial governor, great strides were made in demarcating the legal boundaries of the highway, and legal boundaries of villages along the highway. The measurable result of this effort was to clearly delineate community land, where people were allowed to cultivate and build homes, from strictly protected forest areas, where no development was allowed.
By November 2003, the development map was signed and stamped by all levels of government. Demarcation posts were installed, and made unambiguous what land was for what purpose. Most of the fires caused by rogue soldiers were now under control, reducing the number of land grabbing fires to only 3-5 weekly. Slash-and-burn agriculture was still a problem caused by the poor landless farmers. The worst areas were Prolean, Chi Phat and Chhay Areng.
Wildlife Alliance worked closely with the governor and committee to create a plan for next steps. We finalised the demarcation, did strict and severe ranger patrols, and began laying the foundations for the new agriculture village of Sovanna Baitong.
Recognising the gravity of the situation at Chi Phat, we chose this community as our first focal point. The idea was to build a new agricultural society. It would sustain itself without any slash-and-burn farming or extraction of wildlife from the forest, and accomplish these while building a fair society that rewards honest hard work. The steps to accomplish this were: the government committed to give a land concession where every farmer would receive a permanent cultivation plot with clear demarcation of land; the ministry of land management ensured that individual titles were given for each plot; Wildlife Alliance was tasked with helping develop modern agriculture and providing the inputs (equipment, livestock, seeds, saplings); Wildlife Alliance was also asked to find the funding. So, we did.
Of the 585 families living in Chi Phat in 2002, 280 were surviving on slash-and-burn forest cultivation. Seventy-five moved to the new community in 2004, and more would come over the next few years. Yet more would have joined if not for a malicious village chief. He disapproved of his people moving away from the village to live in the new village of Sovanna Baitong and threatened to burn their Family Books if they did. Family Books are the accumulated documents of a family, and to destroy these documents would be to legally erase a family and the security of Cambodian citizenship.
In January 2004, following a year of planning and construction, the Community Agriculture Development Project (CADP) was ready to be launched. The government donated 1,800 hectares of State land, and USAID donated a million dollars. This munificence funded infrastructure, agricultural inputs and equipment for our teams of agronomists and community developers. Denmark’s DANIDA provided funds for family wells and fruit tree nurseries. Japan’s Kusanone Fund donated money for a school and agricultural equipment. Wildlife Alliance led the project on the ground. We directly supervised the development of the community by living on site and working alongside the farmers. To learn, teach, and adapt, our teams stayed and surmounted a variety of obstacles over the subsequent decades. From this starting point in 2004, the CADP has evolved into the success of modern and sustainable agriculture that is Savonna Baitong today.
The community confronted many challenges to become the example of good governance it is today. The soil of the CADP site was far from adequate. It was essentially sand, with low ph and lack of nutrients. This problem was exacerbated by heavy rain during the wet season, and limited rainfall during the dry season. Farmers lacked the capital to buy fertiliser and other inputs for a successful farm.
Sustaining quality soil is an important consideration for long-term viability, and the initial conditions of our location were poor. With an expertly designed enrichment programme, we confronted this highly acidic soil, deprived of organic matter and so porous that it was unable to retain water.
The soil enrichment plan entailed adding nutrients to the soil to rebuild it over a five-year period. The programme used to rebuild the soil was designed by professional agronomists from Israel. They conducted their initial analysis, led a team of recently graduated Cambodian agronomists, and lived with the farmers of Sovanna Baitong for 11 years. Their expertise and dedication were remarkable, and with their guidance, the community was able to give new life to the uninhabitable desert soil. The agronomists trained under their leadership are among those who continue to manage the farm today.
During cycle one of their method, which was the first period of the dry season, we’d add a mixture of manure, compost and worms to the rows of the fields. Cycle two was the second period of the dry season with peak heat and the least rain, when we added the same mixture and installed shade nets. Cycle three was the wet season. We’d continue to add this mixture to the crops growing in the seedling greenhouse. For the crops in the farm plots, we’d plant the green manure (peanuts) to hold the soil together to avoid the rows from being destroyed by the heavy rains.
Another innovation of this project was our method of composting. It decomposed more rapidly, and further set our village apart with its growing repertoire of adaptive and efficient techniques. It was composed of manure from three types of livestock, grass clippings and lime. Stuffed into plastic bags and left in the full sun, it was ready for use in just three weeks.
Water accessibility was another issue.
One of the single largest investments made for the CADP was a set of pumps to deliver water directly to each family’s home and plot. Our system now consists of five pumps. Piping runs from the central pumps to all the plots. The direct supply of water allowed for the use of drip irrigation in the intensive vegetable parts of the farm plots. It was efficient in preventing the waste of water and nutrients, as targeted fertigation was now feasible. This conserved effort translated into productivity, meaning increased revenue for the farmers.
Each family’s farm plot was one and a half hectares. The vegetables were planted on half a hectare with intensive drip irrigation and fertigation. This allowed farmers to produce at least one harvest per week for sale at the market, as opposed to only one a year, as before when they were living in the forest. Another half-hectare was planted with fruit trees intercropped with corn. The remaining half hectare was the farmer’s choice, usually they planted rice or another old favourite. Vegetables were planted on raised rows made of enriched soil, and during the rainy season protected the rows with plastic to prevent erosion. During the hottest season, they were sheltered with shade nets.
In deciding what to plant in our CADP, we considered the local market. Diversification was important. Prior to our arrival, most forest slash-and-burn farmers grew crops resistant to the extreme weather that yielded only one harvest a year: Rice and cassava had been the traditional slash-and-burn staples. For the cash crops grown under drip irrigation, the farmers could plant watermelons, sweet peppers, lemon grass, eggplants, tomatoes, jackfruits, durians, rambutans, papayas, wood apples, custard apples, Khmer custard apples, rose apples, otaheit apples, milk fruits, burme grapes, sandaricas or mangosteens, to name a few.
We tried several methods of training the farmers in our techniques. Any classroom or theory-based guidance wasn’t effective. The only method of learning that was effective was “learning by doing.” We divided our team of agronomists into 11 subgroups, each focused on a specific group of farmers, working with them in their family plots.
Some of the farmers were skeptical that the drip irrigation method would be effective. They continued to water their crops by hand for several months before the drip method proved itself, and gained their confidence. These triumphs fostered trust in the wider project and had a positive, cascading impact. With enthusiastic participation the project was more likely to do well; disinterested or disheartened farmers aren’t likely to thrive. Maintaining a continual presence and ongoing relationship with the project addressed these. This is the distinction between theory-based models written in a university or NGO head office, and those that show tangible results in the field, over decades. Having the agronomists working with the farmers in the fields daily, for months, to learn by doing, was the effective method.
There were several sorts of social considerations that were arduous to overcome. Some families had been so out of contact with wider society during the civil war that they believed the civil conflict continued, several years after its conclusion. The families who joined Sovanna Baitong had lived isolated lives in the forest with no access to medical care, and the children had never attended school.
To overcome this social isolation, and to help the community reestablish civil society, we formed an Agriculture Association with subgroups that managed basic social services. Marketing Group, Sales Group, Environmental Protection Group, Health, Microcredits. All groups had at least 50% women in decision making positions. Group leaders had a responsibility to more directly support the well-being of the families.
Forty dollars a month for each family was their initial income target, back in 2004. This was the amount on which a slash-and-burn farmer had subsisted, and was already an ambitious target. Up until then, the maximum cash in hand they’d earn was about seven dollars a month. As of 2010, six years into the project, 86% of families had reached this forty-dollar goal, with 30% of the families surpassing $120 monthly. Farming was naturally central, but other sources of income included running shops or other small businesses, operating motorcycle taxis, selling cakes, fishing, selling their labour elsewhere or trading livestock. A predicted trend that the hottest part of the dry season (cycle two) was to be the least productive, as crops struggled with the heat, proved correct. Thankfully the techniques implemented to mitigate the effects of peak heat helped the farms adapt, and the harvests weren’t lost. This innovation and persistence gave the farmers an edge over neighbouring villages, as the scarcity of quality produce drove prices in their favour.
As climate change grows worse, and the Tropical Belt continues to be the most rapidly and severely affected latitude, farmers will need to adapt. We did, and when others were struggling, we comparatively thrived. From this encouraging 2010 metric, Sovanna Baitong has continued to prosper, and to inspire and aid other villages. Regional farmers can procure materials from the Agricultural Store or acquire skills from their demo plot, which showcases some of our techniques that have proven so fruitful.
Over twenty years, Sovanna Baitong has evolved into a model community. This village exemplifies the practices of sustainable agriculture, and Wildlife Alliance has the privilege of having led this accomplishment. With clear memories of our starting position, the elders from Chi Phat and the veterans of Wildlife Alliance feel pride when we reflect on how far we’ve come. In the face of the naysayers, and there were many, we resolutely continued along the path upon which we’d embarked. Where others would view an insurmountable challenge, or a commitment too intimidating to make, we set ourselves and this success apart from those superficial organizations.
