Availability
Country Brief (FAO/GEWS)
http://www.fao.org/giews/countrybrief/country.jsp?code=KHM
Reference Date: 23-October-2009
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FOOD SECURITY SNAPSHOT
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Record rice harvest is anticipated from the current 2009 wet-season crop
Rice is the predominant cereal crop in Cambodia accounting for about 90 percent of the total production. The main season crop will be harvested from December to February. Area cultivated under paddy this season was estimated at 2.28 million hectares, some 126 500 hectares higher than last year. This increase seems to be a direct response to the prevailing high international prices of rice at the time of planting in 2008. Reportedly some 22 000 hectares of paddy crop was damaged due to Typhoon Ketsana at the end of September 2009. The official forecast puts this year’s harvest, including a forecast for the small secondary crop about to be planted, at a record level of 7.6 million tonnes of paddy (4.86 million tonnes rice). Rainfall this year was normal, thus much of the increase in production is due to the rise in the area planted.
Record level of rice exports is likely in 2010
As a result of this bumper harvest the country’s exportable surplus in 2010 is estimated at 1.6 million tonnes, about 6.6 percent higher than the current year. Cambodia was the first country in Asia to lift a rice export ban in May last year. Besides rice, the country also exports small amount, about 100 000 tonnes, of maize but imports all its requirements of wheat, some 28 000 tonnes, as this crop is not produced locally.
Food security issues
The European Union is providing USD 32 million to Cambodia as a part of the Food Security Support Program including a recent donation of over 15 million USD under the FAO’s productivity and safety net programme to improve food security of farm families affected by the soaring food prices. WFP is implementing its three-year protracted relief and recovery operation (PRRO) for 2008-2010 targetting some 1.8 million beneficiaries.
The European Union is providing USD 32 million to Cambodia as a part of the Food Security Support Program including a recent donation of over 15 million USD under the FAO’s productivity and safety net programme to improve food security of farm families affected by the soaring food prices. WFP is implementing its three-year protracted relief and recovery operation (PRRO) for 2008-2010 targetting some 1.8 million beneficiaries.
Cereal Production and Imports
Selected Cereal Prices
Food availability is derived from domestic agricultural output and net food imports at the national level. Various factors can inhabit food availability such as production failures related to climatic conditions or labor constraints; low soil fertility resulting in lower yields and the gradual loss of productive assets needed to sustain household food production. On a macro-economic level, constraints to food availability include inappropriate economic policies, (including pricing marketing, tax and tariff policies), population growth rates that offset increased production or imports, marketing and transportation systems which inhibit the cost-effective movement of food from source to need; and the inability to predict, assess and cope with emergency situations which interrupt food supplies.
In Cambodia the major threats to food availability has been decreasing agricultural productivity, lack of access to land and natural disasters (such as repeated flooding).
An increase in food availability will see a shift from subsistence agriculture, creation of more formal food markets and a decrease in food prices as the gap between demand and supply is narrowed.
