Gender and sustainable intensification: The case of horticulture in Cambodia

In Cambodia, women play particularly important roles in agricultural production, maintaining and ensuring household food security, and serving as caregivers for children and family. At the same time, smallholder Cambodian... [ view full abstract ]

In Cambodia, women play particularly important roles in agricultural production, maintaining and ensuring household food security, and serving as caregivers for children and family. At the same time, smallholder Cambodian agriculture faces challenges typical of the Global South, including soil degradation and loss of farmland due to development-related encroachment and conversion to monoculture cash crops. Sustainable Intensification (SI) consists of a suite of agricultural techniques and practices that seek to increase agricultural production without increasing land use (i.e., extensification) or utilization of environmentally harmful inputs. As a strategy to increase production sustainably while allowing smallholder farmers to diversify their production and thus improve family food security and nutrition, SI holds particular promise. To date, the gendered dimensions of SI have gone underexplored. In this paper we will examine the real and potential impact of SI adoption among rural Cambodian women producers. Drawing theoretically from a gendered economy perspective, we seek to answer two preliminary questions. First, what are the attitudes toward and perceptions of SI practices among Cambodian smallholders, and what are the gender differences in this regard? Second, what are the potential impacts and benefits of adopting SI in horticultural production, especially with respect to the nutritional status and economic empowerment of rural women? To address these questions, mixed-methods fieldwork will be conducted by the lead author in May and June of 2018. This paper is drawn from a larger Penn State project titled Women in Agriculture Network: Cambodia (WAgN-Cambodia). That project, which has support from the USAID-funded Sustainable Intensification Innovation Lab (SIIL) at Kansas State University, seeks to develop, evaluate, and disseminate SI packages for horticulture and rice production, with emphasis on gender dimensions.