Government plugs rubber switch
The government is seeking intrepid smallholder farmers to pilot a project that would transform 6,000 hectares of cropland in two provinces into a patchwork of small rubber plantations. The Ministry of Agriculture is eyeing 5,000 hectares of land in Ratanakkiri and 1,000 hectares in Battambang for the project, and has already secured interest from thousands of smallholder farmers, according to Pol Sopha, general director of the ministry’s rubber development department. “In the first step, we identified 2,500 farming families in two provinces, Battambang, Ratanakkiri, who were willing to invest in growing rubber and ready to convert their land from crop farms to rubber plantations,” he said on February 14.
