“Building Self-reliant Farming Communities 2022”
BY CHAN SEYHA
Awarded the rice mill cooperative investment fund to the farmers from 3 districts are Kamchaymear, Sithor Kandal and Tramkok district, Photo by CEDAC
Standing in the front of the stage and in the middle of row of the seats of 200 farmer representatives and with the microphone on his hand, said that “I plan to develop Cambodia to be the world leader in producing and supplying high quality organic rice, especially organic fragrant rice, by 2022”, Mr Yang Saing Koma said in the Conference at Cambodian-Japanese Cooperation Center (CJCC).
“As I have become interesting in agriculture since I was born in the remote area and somehow I have gotten some influence from my father. However, he is a teacher; he also adored farming. Moreover, I have experienced and seen that agriculture is able to help many people”, Koma explains. Living in a family which father worked as a teacher, my family somehow had lived happily with normal living standard. The approaching of brutal regime, called generally Pol Pot regime, made my family lost the pillar of the family as my father was killed in that regime, said in the sad face.
In 1970, my family moved from my native village, Takeo province to live in Phnom Penh city. In 1975, my life is not different from other people in Cambodia; at the age of 9 year old, I was forced to live far away from my mother separately and done farming from the early morning to the late evening, Koma recalled sadly.
Mr Yang Saing Koma, at the age of 47 continued that after the death of his father, all the burden and responsibility were felled to his mother to be the bread-winner to support six children in the family.
Living in a family without the support of father, Yang Saing Koma tried to earn money while he was studying by helping mother to sell cake, ice, and vegetable.
In spite of facing such the financial problem in the family, he had never given up his studying until graduating grade 10, called High School Diploma nowadays, from high school in Phnom Penh. After graduating from high school in 1984, he had gotten the scholarship to continue his Bachelor Degree in Leninism at Germany under the support of Cambodian government.
“Studying at Germany originally, I chose to specialize in Communism”, Koma added. However, after one year later of studying Leninism, I changed to study Agriculture instead because I thought that this major can help many poor people. Thus, ‘I specialized in agriculture and earned his Ph. D from the University of Leipzig, Germany, in 1995’”, Saing Koma recalls.
“After finishing my Master Degree and PhD in 1995, I returned to Cambodia immediately to get involved in agriculture”, Saing Koma said. He has spent his life over 15 year in agriculture and rural development, especially in the field of action research, training, educations, publication as well as organization development and management, he added.
On 26 August 2012, Yang Saing Koma went to Philippine to get 2012 Roman Magsaysay Award. The Ramon Magsaysay Award is given to persons regardless of race, nationality, creed or gender who address issues of human development in Asia with courage and creativity, and in doing so have made contributions which have transformed their societies for the better. Dr. Koma, who is only the fifth person from Cambodia to receive the award, is being recognized for his creative fusion of practical science and collective will that has inspired and enabled vast numbers of farmers in Cambodia to become more empowered and productive contributors to their country’s economic growth, according to the Roman Magsaysay Award website.
Mr Yang Saing Koma—a former teacher of Royal University of Agriculture (RUA) from October 1995 to 2003– worked with Japanese NGO Japan International Volunteer Center (JVC) from 1995 to 1997. “I decided to stop my teaching at RUA because I have been extremely hectic with business at CEDAC, and I want to help directly to the farmers and to conduct more research and experiment regarding agriculture” Koma explained.
Then, I set up a NGO known as Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture (CEDAC) in August 1997, called “Putting Science at The Service of The Farmers”, with 7 members of his colleagues under the support of French to a leading Cambodian NGO in the field of agriculture and rural development.
“Physically, and mainly, I have created CEDAC because I want to create the Farming Community in order to empower the living’s standard of the Cambodian farmers and Cambodian agriculture to be more developed and be the world’s best exported country in agriculture.”
Mr Yang Saing Koma is the president of CEDAC and also the chairman of CEDAC enterprise, a social enterprise set up by CEDAC in August 2009.
So far, he has also helped to set up the National Farmer Association, which is known as Farmer and Nature Net (FNN) in 2003; and currently he is serving as the advisor of the FNN. Besides working with CEDAC, he also served as chairman and member of Board of Directors of 6 local NGOs, said Saing Koma.
The health of our government and our nation depends on the health of rice farmers. Paddy prices are going down everywhere this year. If it continues like this, the situation can be serious, especially after the harvest of dry season rice in February and March. We are doing our best to support some of the cooperating farmers to receive fair prices for their products. However, we need national policies, strategies and concrete actions to deal with this issue, especially to ensure fairer prices for our hard working rice farmer and for the sake of national food security, said in his Facebook.
“I have created a project called, “Building Self-reliant Farming Communities 2022”, Koma said. I will focus on promoting three main ideas which will make rice farmers to be rich such as growing fragrant rice to sell by using organic methods, selling milled rice instead of paddy, and allocating parts of the income from selling milled rice to invest in rice mill cooperatives, Koma explain in his Facebook.
“I am eager to empower the natural agriculture in Cambodia by creating the Self-reliant Farming Community, and to encourage the 100 thousand farmers to increase their product by creating rice mill community and to make them understand how to use the waste from their product to serve more for their agriculture by using waste to feed chickens or ducks and somehow to use it as the fertilizer for vegetable or other plant. Moreover, we have encouraged them create “Loaning Community”—saving money step by step and providing the loan to the needed farmer, Koma said hopefully. Right now we are planning to create these projects with 13 provinces by selecting the talent, willing and potential farmers who want to be the real farmer and to be the rich farmer; moreover, in the future, we will spread the project national wide.” Koma said in the low pace.
To reach this goal, I need to get more than 400 qualified and committed farmer community assistants to work with more than 100,000 good small-scale organic rice producers. The first group of trainees will be recruited in February 2013. CEDAC needs to find around 2000 USD to support each trainees for one year to develop their professional capacity to work for the farmers, said Saing Koma.
Mr Bao Vuthy, Program Coordinator of CEDAC said that so far we have helped many Cambodian farmers to improve their skills and to create farming family or farming community. Recently, conduct field visits to Kampong Chhnang province under the framework of the project “Improving the Livelihoods of Rice Farmers in Kampong Tralach and Samaky Meanchey district, Kampong Chnang Province”, accompanied Ms Noriko Tsujimoto, Asian Community Trust representative, according to CEDAC’s information.
“We right now have offered the rice mill cooperative investment fund to the farmers from 3 districts are Kamchaymear, Sithor Kandal and Tramkok district, and each districts will receive 1000 million riel to develop their rice mill cooperatives during 2013,” said Saing koma in the conference at CJCC.
As what our prime mister, Hun Sen announced that it had set 2015 to show this nation’s competence in becoming one of the major rice exporters to world’s markets, and to have 500 Cambodian millionaires to develop Cambodia. I plan to have 100,000 rice farmer millionaires to develop rural Cambodia to be better place to live for everyone. This project is officially launched from 03 to 04 of January 2013, Koma said.
In 10 year ahead from 2012 to 2022, CEDAC has empowered 100 thousand Cambodian national-wide farmers to be the ownership of organic rice mill in order to produce organic rice with the high quality to sell to both local and international markets, Mr. Yang Saing Koma said proud fully.
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