PHNOM PENH: World vision held a work shop on Friday 19th with several other organizations to help improving fish farming in the rural areas.

Aquaculture in Cambodia plays an important role in contributing to the improvement of the daily livelihood of the rural farming community.

Fish is the most important source of animal protein in Cambodian's daily diet, with annual per capita of 41kg representing 70% of Cambodia's intake of animal protein (FAO, 2019). In order to achieve the goal of supply he nation's future fishery requirements through aquaculture, the Cambodia Fisheries Administration (FIA) published the strategic Planning Framework (SPF) for Fisheries. Within this framework, the scenarios for future fish demand-supply 2019 suggest that aquaculture production will increase by 20% per year to 185,000 tons per year benefiting 240,000 farmers directly. However, aquaculture development in Cambodia is in its early development stage compared to other countries in the region. It has encountered some problems and constraints in which one of those is a lack of capital, credit for aquaculture investment.

The purpose of the workshop is to describe various methods of linking insurance with credit or inputs that are being proposed, identify the critical features of each method, and discuss the advantages and limitation in these arrangements-farmers, financial service providers (FSPs), and insurers; and setting a sect with government policies.

Attendees will understand the current ecosystem and build the roadmap in order to develop aquaculture insurance environment more effectively in collaborate with private and public sectors and work towards the benefit of smallholder farmers' resiliency.

Attendees for the workshop included government officials from Ministry of Agriculture, Forest Fisheries Administration (FIA), insurance industry, MFIs, as well as relevant key private sectors players, NGO’s and developmental sectors.

Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture (SFSA) mainly focuses on productivity and the inclusion of smallholder farmers in remunerative value chains through extending science-based know-how, creating awareness, building the capacity and implementation of agriculture insurance programs to mitigate production and price risks, who will work closely with Forte insurance Cambodia and the farmers.

Commercialization of Aquaculture for sustainable trade (CAST) is a U.S. Department of Agriculture Food for Progress funded project to accelerate production of high-demanded fish species for the Cambodian market and develop a lasting aquaculture industry. Cast will work closely with the farmers to make sure they have the right training and understanding of the farming.