MENU
back
en
On 29 December 2021, Swisscontact was given the opportunity to join CASIC in the meeting with His Excellency Veng Sakhon, Minister of the Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries to update the progress of CASIC’s work for 2021 and at the same time wish His Excellency a Happy New Year 2022. During the meeting, His Excellency Minister expressed pleased with the progress of CASIC and promise to continue providing various support toward CASIC and CA/SI work in Cambodia. During this meeting, His Excellency Ministry presented the three-supporting organizations, CE SAIN, CIRAD and Swisscontact, with a Certificate of Appreciation for supporting the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in its mission to develop agriculture and improve livelihoods of the farmers through providing outstanding cooperation on technical, financial, and human resource to CASIC. (For More Information about this meeting please visit www.casiccambodia.net
The establishment of the Cambodia Conservation Agriculture and Sustainable Intensification Consortium (CASIC) was initiated in August 2018 by a group of organizations sharing common interest in CA & SI and agroecology based on the understanding that collective effort is needed in order to turn CA & SI and agroecological practices into commercial ventures and to be rooted into the policy agenda. These two objectives are complementary to the existing efforts of cropping system design, soil fertility assessment, and agriculture engineering, and goes beyond the domain of Royal Government of Cambodia and development practitioners. As a result, CASIC establishment is sufficiently justified to take a lead role in bringing together all relevant stakeholders including public sector, private sector (seed producers/suppliers, machinery manufacturers/distributers, financial institutions, etc.), farmers, agriculture cooperatives, research organizations, and academic institutions.
This important role of CASIC will help create a platform for the network of organizations that have interest in CA & SI and agroecology to come together. This will help address the issues of duplication of activities, improve communication between stakeholders, promote awareness of CA & SI and agroecological practices and access to necessary supporting resources, which will ultimately help farmers to speed up their technology uptake. The initiative was discussed and the processes were planned, leading to the official endorsement of CASIC by MAFF’s Decision No. 201.SSR.KSK, dated 21 May 2020, and its official launch in June 2020.
The vision of CASIC is to become a platform for promoting conservation agriculture and sustainable intensification towards agroecological transition in Cambodia and Southeast Asia. The mission of CASIC is to coordinate and support research for development; invest into knowledge management; create an enabling environment for policy dialogues and public-private partnerships; value creation; and explore market opportunities and enhance collaboration between various stakeholders in conservation agriculture, sustainable intensification, and agroecology.
CASIC is governed by a Steering Committee chaired by MAFF with members from Ministry of Interior (MoI), Ministry of Environment (MoE), Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MoWA), Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology (MoWRAM), and Cambodia Chamber of Commerce (CCC) and led by an Executive Board chaired by MAFF and consisting of representatives from the Royal University of Agriculture (RUA) and the General Directorate of Agriculture (GDA) as the vice chairs, and members from the Department of Agricultural Engineering (DAEng), the Department of Agricultural Land Resources Management (DALRM), the Cambodian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI), the Department of Extension for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DEAFF), Swisscontact and CIRAD.