14. The project became a front-runner in terms of putting Cambodia‟s decentralization
policy into practice. This was not an easy process, and caused some delays as well
as a momentary loss of the more production-oriented objectives. Training and
technical assistance played an important part, but capacity was also built through
learning by doing.
Recommendations
15. Support a demand pull strategy for agriculture. In order for farmers to meet
consumer preferences with higher returns and improved household incomes, future
projects should be value chain anchored as well as production-oriented. By
focusing on both production and consumption, it is possible to work for a “double
win” scenario where the emerging global market is taken into consideration.
16. Facilitate farmer promoters to become agricultural input suppliers and
produce traders at the village level. Future projects should promote a
combination of contract farming-driven agricultural development, with farmer
promoters becoming agricultural input suppliers and produce traders at the village
level. In this way, farmer promoters would be able to earn service fees from input
sales, while also delivering technological advice to their client farmers on input use
for productivity gains.
17. Improve irrigation system rehabilitation. In order to achieve satisfactory
impacts, irrigation planning should avoid a compartmentalized approach, and
ensure that a number of critical points1 (e.g. participatory crop irrigation and
planning, water user empowerment and dry season hydrology) are taken into
consideration. In addition, irrigation system areas should be kept small (100-200
hectares) as they tend to generate greater economic internal rates of return.
18. Improve monitoring and evaluation system design and functionality. To
improve impact assessment monitoring, surveys of households before (baseline)
and after projects need to be undertaken. In doing so, and where feasible, the use
of control groups may be desirable. Making use of a limited carefully selected
number of indicators may also improve the functionality of the monitoring and
evaluation system