Helping Buyers and Producers Work Together

Cambodia is now a lower-middle income country, with a growing demand for fruits and vegetables. Many farmers could work their way out of poverty if they could increase sales, yet many buyers find it easier to source their produce from neighboring countries. USAID’s Feed the Future Cambodia Harvest II project (“Harvest II”) is working with buyers to make it easier to do business with local producers.

Chanthan and Nam are vegetable wholesalers working with Harvest II. Nam collects about one and half tons of mixed vegetables every day, including cucumber, eggplant, pumpkin and chili from 25 farmers in his local community and send them by bus to his wife, Chanthan, working at a market in Phnom Penh, 200 kilometers away. Together, they earn barely enough to make a living, but they know they could sell even more vegetables. Nam wants to increase his sales to three tons per day because the demand in high, but it requires a lot of works with producers. He says “Farmers do not always have a regular supply. We have the market, but lack the produce.”

vegetable producer Chun Sokhom
©Feed the Future Cambodia Harvest II/2018/Solina Kong

Under its buyer-led approach, Harvest II helps with buyers of all sizes, including Nam and Chanthan, increase sales by entering into a win-win relationship with local producers, based on a clear understanding of buyer demands. Harvest II first helped Nam and Chantham diagnose constraints to increased sales among their existing farmers and identify new farmers to work with. Then, they all met to devise solutions to increase sales in the immediate term and envision how they could grow their businesses over the longer term.

To date, Harvest II has connected Chanthan and Nam to ten new farmers. Sokhom is a farmer who can produce 200 kg of cucumber per day. She supplies cucumber to four different buyers including Nam but is willing to supply more to him with a fair price agreement. By adding these new producers, Chanthan and Nam can increase their sales to three tons per day. However, supply is not stable due to a lack of technical know-how at the farmer level.

Vegetable buyer Lach Nam collects eggplants from farmer Chun Sokhom to supply to the wholesale market in Phnom Penh.

©Feed the Future Cambodia Harvest II/2018/Solina Kong

Harvest II will help improve the production capacity of Chanthan and Nam’s farmer clients by arranging a production schedule that aligns to the needs of their customers in the wholesale market while providing targeted capacity building on technical production and business management, as well as access to finance.