National Strategy for Food Security and Nutrition.

The National Strategy for Food Security and Nutrition is a comprehensive and applicable national food security strategy for Cambodia with duration of five years, 2014-2018. The Strategy was developed to complement existing sector strategies and plans, to fill existing gaps and to serve as a platform for joint inter-sectorial action to enhance food security and nutrition. The scope of the Strategy is broad, comprising of priority actions over the following four dimensions: availability, access, use and utilisation of food and stability of food supply. The Strategy provides the following three programmatic priority areas for its implementation: availability of and sustainable access to food at household level, child and maternal nutrition, and vulnerability of the food insecurity and exposure to risks.
The Strategy will seek that food-insecure households increase availability and access to food through more productive and diversified agriculture and livestock production, sustainable fisheries and forestry, and from non- agricultural employment and income opportunities; that Cambodians improve use and utilization of their food resulting in reduced child and maternal malnutrition and enhanced human and economic development; and that improved food security related social protection and enhanced capacities of poor and vulnerable households to cope with risks and shocks increase the stability of their food supply. In particular, the Strategy will seek establish evidence based nutrition interventions in the health sector and nutrition education; nutrition actions across sectors; and integrated and community based nutrition interventions.
The Strategy will enhance access of food insecure farmers to low cost, adaptable and replicable technological innovation for rice and other crops, aquaculture, small livestock and vegetable production, and farm storage and processing; improve access of food insecure farmer to small scale irrigation, specifically in drought prone areas; and improve access and appropriate use of quality and safe inputs for food insecure smallholder. Particularly, it will seek to raise awareness on nutritional values of local agricultural products and mainstream nutrition in agriculture extension; scale up programs promoting diversified food production, storage and processing at household level, community and schools and link these programs to the health sector; and develop and reinforce implementation of laws and regulations to promote agricultural production and nutrition for better health and environment and improved food safety and increase public awareness on safe food.
The Strategy will provide land distribution to the food insecure and employment and income generation for food insecure households. In particular, it will scale up distribution of communal land titles to indigenous minorities; and improve access of poor farmers who have received land titles to agricultural support services and markets. In addition, the Strategy will seek to enhance technical and vocational educational training for the poor and food insecure in rural areas to increase skills and employability; specifically, enhanced work skills needed for agro-processing enterprises and agroeconomic concession, and enhanced social protection in the informal wage sector specifically for women will be sought.
The Strategy will seek the intensification, diversification and market integration of small holder farming systems, and access and sustainable use of common property fishery and forest resources. Particularly, the Strategy will enhance access to credit and saving for smallholder; promote mechanisms to link smallholders better to markets and develop promising value chains; support establishment of farmer organisations and agricultural cooperatives to promote food production and family income. In addition, it will seek to improve legal and regulatory framework and access to technology for SME and extend financial support to promote their integration into a global value chain; and further enhance road and market infrastructure specifically in food-insecure regions.
The Strategy will seek to promote disaster preparedness and mitigation and climate change mitigation and adaptation. It will create capacities for disaster risk management and climate change adaptation at national and sub-national level; strengthen capacities at national and sub-national level to respond adequately and timely to food crises and improve coordination of emergency response between government institutions, civil society organisations and development partners; streamline and integrate existing information, classification systems and tools on early warning and disaster impact assessments; build up and mange effectively the national food reserve to provide timely supply of food and seeds to households affected by natural disasters or economic crisis and to counteract price increases; and maintain and rehabilitate canal, river, natural lakes for mitigated floods and droughts.
The Strategy addresses the institutional and policy environment for its effective implementation and outlines guiding principles and priority actions to improve and further develop, mainly: coordination and policy oversight, monitoring and evaluation, knowledge and information management, selection of beneficiaries, and capacity building at national and decentralized level.