Reaping Rewards with Resilient Rice in Cambodia
Channel: Agrilinks
Date: 2017-06-27

Although rice has long been a staple of Southeast Asia, per country, Cambodia has the lowest rice yields in the region. Other circumstances threaten the Cambodian subsistence farmer, who make up about 80% of the country’s population. These threats include extreme weather events, overreliance on a few strains of rice, and longer growing seasons for a single rice crop when compared to the country’s neighbors. 

To help improve yields, IRRI has developed a new breed of rice, CAR 15, for Cambodian farmers. The rice has been engineered to withstand droughts and its growth cycle allows a farmer to harvest three times in a growing season rather than two.
Because of innovations like these, Feed the Future is helping Cambodian rice and aquaculture farmers escape poverty. In 2015, FTF-supported rice farmers, about 40 percent of whom are women, increase their incomes by 55 percent and since 2014, rice production has increased from 158,000 to 255,076 metric tons. 

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Sources:
http://news.irri.org/2016/08/cambodian-farmers-adopting-climate.html
https://feedthefuture.gov/sites/default/files/resource/files/2016%20Feed%20the%20Future%20Progress%20Report_0.pdf
https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1864/USAID-Cambodia_NCP.pdf