Government Must Work With Farmers to Combat Climate Change
Some 9.5 million Cambodians who directly engage in agriculture must adopt new techniques in order to counter dynamic weather patterns caused by climate change, and the government must work with farmers to ensure that it happens, an agricultural conference was told last week. Flown in from India to speak at the National Farmers’ Forum in Phnom Penh on Friday, V.R. Haridas, an environmental science expert for Caritas India, urged the government to work with the agriculture sector, which provides at least one-third of Cambodia’s gross domestic product, to ensure the nation’s food security. “The future of farmers across Asia is at stake due to the increasingly unpredictable nature of rainfall due to climate change,” Mr. Haridas said. “These farmers in their traditional methods were once dependent only on themselves for yields, but now require updates on how to work their land to the best advantage of themselves and the nation’s food stocks,” he said. Mr. Haridas said that while flooding was an unavoidable, annual occurrence, it was something that farmers could be better prepared for. “There is the potential to build —cheaply—thousands of small ponds and small-scale irrigation canals that would help alleviate floods and also preserve water for the times of year when there is none,” he said. “It has been done in India and it can be done here.” Chea Meng, deputy administrative director at the budget department within the Ministry of Finance, said Friday that funds for the Agriculture Ministry would increase from just $20.2 million of the country’s $3 billion-plus budget in 2013 to $23.5 million in 2014. ...
Matt Blomberg and Khuon Narim
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/government-must-work-with-farmers-to-combat-climate-change-45678/
