Wild gardening as a sustainable intensification strategy in northwest Cambodian smallholder systems

Sarah Eissler, David Ader, Sovanneary Huot, Stuart Brown, Ricky Bates and Thomas Gill

Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 2021, vol. 10, issue 3

Abstract: Within the last decade, Sustainable Intensification (SI) has emerged as a strategy to respond to future food security challenges. It incorporates increased food production without the cultivation of more land while incurring no net environmental cost. Frameworks attempting to measure SI often focus heavily on production indicators while overlooking other important indicators, such as impacts on economic, social, or human conditions. In this study, we evaluate the purposeful assemblage and management of neglected and underutilized species (NUS) in fringe areas around rural homesteads as a potential SI strategy. We use a recent SI assessment framework developed by the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Sustainable Intensification (SIIL) that incorporates five measurable domains (productivity, economic, environmental, human condition, and social). We present findings from a qualitative case study in northwest Cambodia to assess local conceptu­alization of wild gardening, current uses of NUS, perceived benefits and challenges to their use and management, and the potential of wild gardening as a SI strategy. The qualitative methods employed 65 key informant interviews and four focus group discussions with both men and women partici­pants. Our results indicate that wild gardening is an important component of rural livelihoods in northeast Cambodia. However, a general lack of knowledge of strategic benefits, such as nutrition poten­tial, inhibits its use for maximum benefits. Wild gardening addresses multiple SI domains simultaneously and demonstrates the potential to be a promising SI strategy for improving rural livelihoods in Cambodia.

Keywords: Crop; Production/Industries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/360317/files/945.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:joafsc:360317

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development from Center for Transformative Action, Cornell University
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().