Historical Agrarian Change and its Connections to Contemporary Agricultural Extension in Northwest Cambodia

ABSTRACT

This historical overview uses a political ecology approach to examine agricultural change over time in Northwest Cambodia. It focuses on key historical periods, actors, and processes that continue to shape power, land, and farming relations in the region, emphasizing the relevance of this history for contemporary investments in agricultural extension services and research as part of the Zero Hunger by 2030 policy agenda for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Agricultural extension projects need to engage critically with historically complex and dynamic power, land, and farming relations – not only as the basis of social relations but as central to understanding the contemporary manifestation of farmer decision making and practice. Initiatives such as the SDGs replicate long histories of externally driven power-relations that orient benefits from changed practices towards elites in urban centers or distant global actors. Efforts to realize zero hunger by 2030 are endangered by neglect for the path-dependency of power-land-farming relations, which stretch from the past into the present to structure farmer decision making and practices.

KEYWORDS:

• agricultural extension
• agrarian change
• political ecology
• farmers
• Cambodia.

Introduction

Global initiatives like the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) assume that increasing crop yields and intensifying commercial production are central to achieving food security.¹ To date, these approaches have proceeded with little consideration for the historical and social relations that constitute rural realities and situate farmer decision-making.² The global agenda giving rise to the SDGs prioritizes market-oriented policy reforms and rural development interventions that largely obscure questions of power. This assumes that “sustainable agriculture” is apolitical and ahistorical.³ This framing privileges the entrenched economic interests of political and financial elites across multiple scales.⁴ It also avoids the social complexities that shape the political economy of agrarian change, thereby limiting the effectiveness of agricultural extension as the primary means of achieving change for the UN’s second SDG, which is to “end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture.”⁵

The Kingdom of Cambodia launched the "National Action Plan for Zero Hunger Challenge" with an aim to eradicate hunger and malnutrition by 2025. The plan relies on strengthening and expanding public and private agricultural extension services to increase productivity and sustainability.⁶ This globally-oriented and state-led emphasis on agricultural extension positions farmers as the subjects of change, often taking the form of transfers of agricultural knowledge and technologies as prompts for changed farmer practices.⁷ Those practices, though, are shaped by social relations as farmers navigate power structures that are neither fixed nor stable, but relational and emergent over time. Those structures are produced though encounters with place, human and nonhuman entities, institutions, knowledges, and practices, all of which temporarily destabilize and constrain the exercise of power.⁸ If future modalities of agricultural extension are to make substantial positive contributions to farmer wellbeing, then they must recognize and negotiate such relations – including their historical path dependency – as central to supporting and empowering farmers.

In 2015, at least eighty percent of rural Cambodians relied on agricultural production as their primary source of income and food security.⁹ The government’s agricultural extension policies have positioned agricultural extension as central to addressing the agricultural challenges faced by farmers. The policy refers to power in terms of “empowering” farmers and extension workers; land in reference to land management and productivity; and farming primarily in terms of productivity, income, technology, and commercialization. It makes these references without considering the role of history or social relations. The policy acknowledges that farmers are facing low productivity, labor precarity, and poverty, with many rural people selling their land and migrating to find other labor opportunities.¹⁰ These problems are, however, framed as the outcome of a “lack of or limited agricultural extension services, regulations, and system; lack of human resources, funding, techniques, and technology; lack of extension materials and packaging; and limited agricultural extension methodology and means.”¹¹ However, this reading does not consider the multiple ways in which contemporary farming realities are shaped by past and present social, material, and economic relations that extend beyond the “farmgate.”¹²

In contrast to the suggestion that agricultural issues can simply be resolved through the transfer of improved technologies, advice, and materials, we use a political ecology lens to attend to the shifting social relations that have influenced farmer activities over time in Cambodia. These shifts are inseparable from the complex and turbulent histories of Cambodia’s northwest region. In what follows we emphasize the evolving relations between politics and land in the context of agrarian change at multiple scales. Our analysis foregrounds a history of social relations to better understand the struggles and challenges facing Cambodian farmers today, expanding the scope of activities that can be considered within efforts to improve agricultural livelihoods and outputs.

Like many rural areas throughout Cambodia, Northwest Cambodia has experienced a boom in the production of cash crops.¹³ This transformation has accelerated deforestation.¹⁴ Often framed as the “last forest frontier” or a “borderland,” the region has undergone rapid agricultural expansion of annual crops, including sesame, soybean, mung bean, maize, and cassava.¹⁵ The labor of demobilized Khmer Rouge soldiers and their families, as well as migrant farmers, has enabled these agrarian transitions, being connected to broader temporal and geographical political, capital, and market relations.¹⁶ Agrarian expansion and intensified production are also turning land into a financial asset for trade and exploitation.¹⁷ This makes farmers more susceptible to market fluctuations and to rapid environmental change, exacerbating challenges predicated on debt, migration, and food insecurity.¹⁸ Together, these transformations reinforce the economic interests of a small number of powerful elites who control local capital and economies.¹⁹

To better understand these patterns of agrarian change, ecological degradation, financial insecurity, and exploitation, we examine changing relations of power, land, and farming across seven key historical periods since the Angkor Era (see Table 1). We contend that efforts to improve agricultural extension – exhibited most prominently in the global prioritization of SDGs – must recognize and engage with the historical foundations of rural inequalities if they are to positively contribute to farmers’ lives and livelihoods. Such a perspective is presently missing.

Table 1. Key historical drivers shaping agrarian change in Northwest Cambodia.

Key historical drivers	Historical periods
	Angkor	Post-Angkor	French Protectorate	Kingdom of Cambodia	Democratic Kampuchea	Transitional period	New Kingdom of Cambodia
Spiritualities	Neak ta Spirits of the dead/ territorial guardian spirits				Surreptitious cultural practices	Neak ta Spirits of the dead/ territorial guardian spirits/ war ghosts
	From Shaivistic Hinduism/Mahayana Buddhism to Therevāda Buddhism Transition from God King to moral King	Therevāda Buddhism Moral King				Therevāda Buddhism Democracy^170
	Wats Places of encounter, spiritual protection, agricultural practices knowledge exchange					Wats Places of encounter, spiritual protection, agricultural practices knowledge exchange
Materialities	Rice production and export Timber and fishing
	Cardamon, wax		Rubber Rice wine and sugar	Cash crops (maize)	Rice exports	Cash crops (maize, cassava, cashews, rambutan, fruit trees)
	Rapid environmental change (flooding and droughts) Complex irrigation and water management
					Landmines
Labor and production	Customary and slaved labor	Forced labor	Corvée labor		Forced collectivization of labor	Collective labor	Individualized and waged labor
	Rice/labor tax	Rice tax	Rice/labor tax	Taxation/ Debt and credit	Rice tax	Debt and credit
Political and economic power	Caste system King (Angkor)	King (Phnom Penh)	King / French	King / communism	Khmer Rouge	UNTAC / Cambodian government	Cambodian government
	Patron networks				Allegiance to the Khmer Rouge	Patron networks (ex-Khmer Rouge warlords / elites)
	War/military incursions from neighboring kingdoms				Internal armed conflict and war/military incursions from neighboring kingdoms	Post-conflict
	Champa	Siam	Siam France	Thailand Vietnam USA	Thailand Vietnam	Thailand and Vietnamese Multilaterals Donors NGOs UNTAC	Multilaterals Donors NGOs UNTAC
				Agricultural Department State-centered agricultural extension	Forced re-education, collectivization of land	Market and project-based agricultural extension Public-private partnerships
Land control	King ownership Kram, Paukeas (possession)	Paukeas	Paukeas Kamaset (ownership)		Forced collectivization	Collective agricultural production	Private land ownership – debt driven land grabs
	Customary land tenure				Collectivization of land and destruction of title
Mobility/isolation		War related in-migration and emigration			Separation of families, forced migration	In-migration, emigration, and resettlement	In-migration and emigration, debt driven migration
Forest/degradation			Accelerated agrarian expansion, rapid deforestation, and soil degradation

Table 1 provides an overview of the seven historical periods examined in this article, allowing the continuities and changes across periods to be seen with a historical perspective. Table 1 is organized around seven key drivers: spiritualities, materialities, labor and production, political and economic power, land control, mobility/isolation, and forest/degradation. Notable continuities include Therevāda Buddhism, wats as centers of culture, the centrality of rice production, elite rule in its various forms, political intervention by foreign powers, and agricultural expansion through forest exploitation. Alongside these continuities there have been major changes to labor and land tenure regimes (including slavery, collectivization, and individual land tenure), taxation systems, and elites. While specific behaviors and thinking have evolved (i.e., divisions of labor) overarching forces and priorities have remained remarkably consistent (i.e., disempowerment of local farmers and externally-driven efforts to raise agricultural production). While there have also been major periods of war and rebuilding, including shifts in the prominence of major non-rice crops, there remain consistencies that deserve recognition in the context of contemporary efforts to influence the agricultural sector via agricultural extension.

Methodology

Drawing from the work of different scholars,²⁰ we examine seven periods, organized by broad changes in national-scale governance structures: the Angkor era (eighth to the fourteenth century); the post-Angkor period (fourteenth to the nineteenth century); the French Protectorate era (1863 to 1953); the Kingdom of Cambodia (1953 to 1975); Democratic Kampuchea (1975 to 1979); the People’s Republic of Kampuchea and transitional period (1979 to 1993); and the contemporary Kingdom of Cambodia (see Table 1). In each period we focus on changing power structures, shifting approaches to land, and how farming may have changed or been affected.

Our analysis also is informed by a review of articles, edited books, policy documents, and project reports from state-led agencies, multilateral and bilateral donors, non-governmental organizations, academia, farmer movements, and the private sector, replicating a methodology implemented in the global context of agricultural extension.²¹ Where possible we have focused on the history of agrarian change in Northwest Cambodia and, if not available, limited ourselves to documents focused on Cambodia. This focus has made the analysis more manageable, although we acknowledge that our analysis is partial and predominantly shaped by English language materials, academic scholarship, and government sources.

A brief history of agrarian change in Northwest Cambodia

Cambodian territory is formed by lowlands and rivers that flow into the Mekong River Basin or the Tonle Sap Lake (Figure 1). Monsoon flooding takes place in September and October each year, fertilizing rice plains and increasing the abundance of fish stocks.²² However, upstream hydropower dams and climate change in recent years have altered Mekong flood patterns, disrupting the seasonal supply of fish and other flood-connected resources in the floodplains.²³ In response, rice farmers have increased their dry season rice production, but with uncertain long-term impacts. The highlands have a long history of smallholder farming and shifting cultivation.²⁴ Non-swidden farming (e.g., maize, beans, cassava, fruit trees) in upland areas of Northwest Cambodia is relatively new compared to lowland areas, where paddy rice cultivation has long been practiced.²⁵

Figure 1. Map of Northwest of Cambodia.

An Indigenous rural animistic belief system known as neak ta (land and guardian spirits) has remained widespread since ancient times. Water, forest, and land spirits serve as territorial protectors (mcâs dẏk mcâs ṭī, “owners of water and land”), while other entities known as bralẏng manifest as humans, corporeal, and nonhuman entities.²⁶ Misfortune and health issues are often associated with bralẏng.²⁷ This Indigenous ontology has mixed with Buddhism, shaping understandings of territorial guardian spirits and deceased ancestors, who are considered inseparable from the land.²⁸ The spirits of the dead continue to inhabit rural landscapes, at times manifesting through different interlocutors and dreams while also shaping the transfer of knowledge.²⁹ Neak ta is at the heart of Khmer society and culture, shaping human and nonhuman interactions, including agricultural practices.³⁰ These beliefs and practices have retained meaning and significance for many farmers throughout the seven periods discussed below and in the present.

Angkor Era

Battambang, the capital of the province of the same name, was founded in the eleventh century on the Sangker River.³¹ The Angkor Kingdom was an agrarian civilization that relied on social hierarchies to maintain control of the population. The King of Angkor mediated between cosmological and worldly orders while also taking attributes from land spirits.³² Social hierarchies were reinforced by royal institutions and patronage networks. The power of the king was exercised by appointees called okyas, which included five ministers and provincial and district governors.³³ Both rice production and farming labor were subject to a ten percent tax. Periods of war with neighboring kingdoms located in present day Thailand and Vietnam increased demand for food reserves, which in turn required intensified modes of rice production and labor organization.³⁴

During the thirteenth century, with the expansion of Therevāda Buddhism from Thailand to the area, the Angkor king evolved into the dhammaraja (a moral or righteous king). Rapid environmental changes during this period destroyed the complex water management system for which Angkor was famed, reducing irrigation capacity and limiting agricultural production.³⁵

During the Angkor era, land was divided into three zones: kampong, the center of political and economic power; srok (sruk), the cultivated and domesticated world, which included srae – rice hinterlands along the Tonle Sap floodplain, shaped by complex water control and irrigation systems that enabled multiple harvests per year; and prey, forest land and remote villages, subjected to intensive resource exploitation and sometimes forced kidnappings for labor. Prey was often represented as a dangerous zone of threats, diseases, death, and outlaw practices, including spiritual power.³⁶ Central to Khmer culture were Hindu rituals and protocols, leading to contrasts between “wild and tamed … dark haunted bushland versus inhabited open space.”³⁷ In this context, civilization was seen as “the art of remaining outside the forest.”³⁸ Kram, the traditional land tenure system, gave the king ownership, positioning him as the protector of land and custodian of human and spiritual peace.³⁹ Coexisting customary and collective forms of land tenure and management were widespread. Farmers had land possession rights (paukeas) which they could claim by farming the land.⁴⁰

Agricultural production during the Angkor era was predominately collectivized and took place around temples, which had access to irrigation.⁴¹ Although the distribution of labor during this period remains unclear, social hierarchical divisions positioned farmers as a lower caste.⁴² Slave labor was central to agrarian production, with some enslaved groups periodically moving to new areas in response to agricultural labor needs.⁴³ This labor model supported the maintenance of networks of water reservoirs, which were central to the expansion of agricultural production across the Great Angkor region.⁴⁴ Buddhist temples, known as wats, played a key role as places of encounter and spiritual protection, where ceremonies, social gatherings, and government meetings were held.⁴⁵ Wats also served as gathering places for farmers to exchange information and knowledge, as well as venues where Buddhist monks likely offered training on agricultural practices and rites.⁴⁶

Post-Angkor period

During the post-Angkor period (the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries), the political economy continued to be shaped by the king and the chovay srok patronage networks, but with the addition of growing foreign interests.⁴⁷ Regional trade with the Kingdom of Ayutthaya enabled the expansion of Chinese maritime trade in Southeast Asia, and trade across the lower Mekong basin.⁴⁸ Phnom Penh became increasingly influential as a regional center.⁴⁹ The circulation of farming surpluses via trade reinforced the power of chovay srok through the rice taxation system and increased the influence of Chinese traders.⁵⁰

Beginning in the Angkor period, tribal groups “collected the forest products that formed a major source of a monarch’s income and the bulk of the goods that Cambodia sent abroad.”⁵¹ However, this period was also marked by political instability due to occasional territorial invasions by Siam and other neighboring kingdoms, including Champa and Dai Nam. In the seventeenth century there were also attempts by Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and French mercenary troops and Catholic missionaries to gain control of the Mekong Delta to influence trade.⁵²

Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Kingdom of Siam took control of Battambang, fueling conflicts between central and northwest provinces in Kampuchea.⁵³ In exchange for military protection, dissenting chovay srok gave the Siam king rights over forest resources and allowed the recruitment of labor for the Siam army.⁵⁴ In this way, northwest Kampuchea resisted the centralization of power, a trend that continues to influence contemporary relations in Democratic Kampuchea.⁵⁵

During the post-Angkor period most of the population in the northwest were farmers who relied primarily on rice production. At least 2,000 endemic varieties of rice have been identified in Kampuchea.⁵⁶ However, the livelihoods of farmers and rural communities were regularly hampered by periods of environmental uncertainty, state taxes, forced labor, and warfare.⁵⁷

French Protectorate (1863-1953)

The Mekong delta came under French control in 1862 when King Norodom of Kampuchea requested protection, establishing the French Protectorate.⁵⁸ French colonial authorities maintained the power of the royal family as well as social hierarchies. Farmers continued to be governed by a complex web of political and religious values and power relations.⁵⁹ Economic output focused on the production of rice, rubber, and timber.⁶⁰ Most royal revenues were derived from Chinese operated opium farms, gambling concessions, and rice products such as wine and sugar.⁶¹

During the French Protectorate period, land was privatized, creating a distinction between paukeas (possession rights) and kamaset (ownership rights).⁶² The latter were used by French and urban investors to register ownership over forests and rubber concessions, with farmers’ land rights rarely recognized.⁶³ The return of the northwest provinces by Siam during this time was followed by farmer migrations southward because of demographic pressure. Migration led to unequal distribution of land, which increased levels of insecurity and conflict.⁶⁴ Land titles and transfers intensified the role of patronage networks, which led to problems with land concentration along the northwest border.

Colonial forest reserves were established and agreements between logging companies and colonial forest administration authorities regulated logging, excluding people and their livestock. This contributed to the proliferation of illegal smuggling routes involving local authorities and Thai traders.⁶⁵ Farmers were required to pay their taxes in cash, which pushed farmers to sell their produce despite unfavorable conditions, increasing their debt, increasing land dispossession, and giving rise to wage labor.⁶⁶ Corvée labor in lieu of taxes was widely enforced to maintain public works, including transportation networks.

In the 1930s, the emergence of the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) led to the expansion of an anti-colonial movement across the region. In the 1940s, progressive Buddhist groups and the Khmer Issarak (Free Khmer Movement) protested colonial plundering and control.⁶⁷ During World War II, Japanese forces weakened French power, resulting in Battambang falling under Thai control. In 1945 the Japanese declared a coup de force, which in the following years contributed to the end of French rule of Indochina. In 1946, the Thai government returned Battambang to France. Finally, King Norodom Sihanouk declared the independence of Cambodia in 1953.⁶⁸

The Kingdom of Cambodia (1953-1975)

After King Norodom Sihanouk declared independence from France, foreign influence over the production of rice, rubber, and maize continued to expand.⁶⁹ Reflecting global priorities arising from famines and concerns over population expansion,⁷⁰ an agricultural extension program was established in 1957.⁷¹ An extension unit was created within the Ministry of Agriculture to increase rice, vegetable, and livestock production for export and to expand irrigation systems in the northwest. A top-down approach to extension was implemented, introducing cooperatives and a credit system while relying on radio and television campaigns to disseminate information.⁷²

In 1955, the United States government signed a military aid agreement with Cambodia. However, in 1964 aid from the USA was rejected by King Sihanouk, who began a nationalization program.⁷³ From 1965 to 1973, the US Air Force repeatedly bombed rural areas in Cambodia, initially targeting Viet Cong forces operating within Cambodia and later Cambodian revolutionary forces. These aerial attacks killed at least 600,000 Cambodians and left thousands of unexploded bombs across Laos and Cambodia.⁷⁴

In 1967, farmer uprisings in Samlout in the northwest marked the beginning of the Cambodian Civil War, which lasted from 1967 until 1975. In this unstable context, the royal government deployed the military to take control of rice production in Battambang, collect taxes, and halt trade with communist groups.⁷⁵

Colonial land and forest tenure arrangements were sustained during this period.⁷⁶ While there was a halt to foreign concessions, the number of landless farmers increased from four percent to twenty percent between 1950 and 1970.⁷⁷ Incentives from the royal government designed to provide access to and expansion of agricultural land facilitated the migration of families from the southwest to the northwest. The influx of labor resulted in the expansion of rice production from 1.7 to 2.5 million hectares, growing from thirty-four percent of total exports in 1957 to fifty percent in 1963.⁷⁸

Extension services were interrupted during the war as domestic consumption of rice decreased. The war’s impact was amplified by high taxes and personal debt, which escalated the illegal trade of rice. Simultaneously, the government used military force to compel farmers to sell their rice to the state at below market rates.⁷⁹ As in present circumstances,⁸⁰ farmers relied heavily on credit to pay agricultural taxes. In response, beginning in the 1960s, farmers began mobilizing against corrupt government and military officials. As a result, the northwest region became a center for the Khmer Rouge.⁸¹

Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979)

In 1975, Khmer Rouge forces took control of Phnom Penh. They forced approximately two million urban residents to relocate to rural areas.⁸² The Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, prioritized collectivized rice production⁸³ and the complete abandonment of past cultural practices to enable the emergence of a new revolutionary order.⁸⁴ These actions included consolidation of land and destruction of land titles⁸⁵ and the execution of all people linked to the previous government, including teachers, university officials, and the elderly.⁸⁶

During this period, dissident Khmer Rouge troops in the Northwest continued the cross-border timber trade with Thai merchants.⁸⁷ Alongside economic collectivization, the Khmer Rouge regime forcibly collectivized land and natural resources.⁸⁸ Schools, religion, money, and private property were abolished.⁸⁹ Forest concessions were terminated and access to forests was restricted.⁹⁰ Landmines were used to control and limit access to agricultural lands. An estimated six million landmines were deployed around the country during and after the war.⁹¹ These explosives continue to shape contemporary land management practices and agricultural opportunities.⁹²

All residents were organized in large collective farms. All production activities were performed by production groups, enforcing the separation of families and social networks, with some of these groups functioning as mobile brigades.⁹³ Rice production was intensified using compost as a fertilizer, natural insecticides, and irrigation. The resulting surplus was exported, continuing the practice of producing profits for those in power. Small paddy fields were transformed into larger, uniform one hectare plots, destroying the traditional system of rice paddy cells while contributing to the loss of seed varieties.⁹⁴

Importantly, the killing of farmers, particularly the elderly, resulted in a fragmentation of traditional knowledge and practices predicated on sharing, learning, and passing on ecological knowledge to younger generations.⁹⁵ This loss contributed to the destruction of kinship relations, institutions, and moral norms.

The People’s Republic of Kampuchea and transitional period (1979-1993)

In 1979, a Khmer-Vietnamese military coalition took control of Phnom Penh, leading to the collapse of the Khmer Rouge government. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the northwest region was a center of Khmer Rouge resistance.⁹⁶ Although the new government revoked forest use agreements signed by the Khmer Rouge with Thai military-aligned logging companies for their role in financing the insurgency, deforestation continued.⁹⁷ At the national level, Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge soldier who had joined the Vietnamese forces during the Cambodian-Vietnamese War, consolidated power, eventually serving as prime minister from 1985 to 2023.

From 1979 to 1989, agricultural production in lowland areas was collective, with ten to fifteen families forming solidarity groups (Krom Samaki) that shared ownership of land. Some regions allowed private land use rights beginning in 1982, but only in 1989 was the Krom Samaki system formally replaced with private land ownership.⁹⁸ Following the 1991 peace agreement between the government and the remnants of the Khmer Rouge, a new land law decreed state ownership of all land. This law granted individuals possession rights, yet in practice permitted some individuals to claim private land ownership while many farmers were unable to register their land claims.⁹⁹

The World Bank and other international donors lobbied for the reintroduction of a forest concession system in the 1990s to fund post-conflict development via public-private partnerships.¹⁰⁰ A coalition between Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) and former King Sihanouk’s royalist party, the National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful, and Cooperative Cambodia (Front Uni National pour un Cambodge Indépendant, Neutre, Pacifique, et Coopératif, FUNCINPEC), enabled a forest concession system to be co-opted by political elites and used to appease potential insurgents, becoming an instrument for the accumulation of capital, land, and power.¹⁰¹ Patronage networks facilitated this transition, while also enabling the expansion of elite land capture; by 2001, at least thirty-nine percent of all land in Cambodia was classified as forest concessions.¹⁰² In addition, approximately five percent of the country’s territory was reserved for the military, contributing to the militarization of natural resource management.¹⁰³

As people began resettling along the northwest frontier following the cessation of violence, vast areas of forest were cleared and converted to agricultural land. Many people died or were injured from landmines while clearing forest areas.¹⁰⁴ Landmines have caused a dramatic health crisis, constrained rural mobility and farming practices, and had wide socioeconomic and environmental impacts. Clearance programs have been funded primarily by international donors and NGOs.¹⁰⁵ By 2003 at least 64,000 individuals had lost their lives and another 25,000 had had traumatic amputations from mine blasts.¹⁰⁶

Following the 1991 peace accord many landless individuals sought opportunities in the country’s northwest region, some returning to the villages where they had lived prior to the civil war.¹⁰⁷ In an effort to appease former insurgents, the state offered livelihood alternatives to demobilized soldiers, which has been central to the expansion of the agrarian frontier and increased productivity.¹⁰⁸

In 1979, the new government reactivated extension services.¹⁰⁹ In 1980, a committee for extension development began disseminating technical agricultural knowledge to farmers in rural areas, primarily using mass media, booklets, pamphlets, and posters.¹¹⁰ Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) worked with government agencies to support the reactivation of agricultural extension and the training of extension officers.¹¹¹

The new Kingdom of Cambodia (1993-present)

A flood of international aid and investment followed the 1991 peace accord, influencing and distorting local economies as they were reoriented towards global markets.¹¹² An emphasis on trade has continued to reinforce the political economies of former Khmer Rouge warlords and Thai military actors.¹¹³ As part of adopting a liberal economic model, the government ended subsidies for agricultural inputs such as water pumps, seeds, gasoline, fertilizer, and pesticides.¹¹⁴

In addition, beginning in 1998, a strategy for political and territorial reintegration, Samaharenekam, gave former Khmer Rouge soldiers positions within provincial and district administrations. Integration into government effectively ended lingering conflicts while also reinforcing the political and economic power relations of the Khmer Rouge.¹¹⁵ Integration also reinforced the power of lower-level Khmer Rouge representatives within newly created villages, resulting in land management that has continued to expand the agrarian frontier – a process that is pronounced across the northwest uplands.¹¹⁶ The 2001 Land Law helped to legitimize market-driven land acquisition.¹¹⁷ The Land Management and Administration Program (LMAP), a multi-donor project led by the World Bank and the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning, and Construction, supported the implementation of land reforms, strengthening institutional and legal frameworks.¹¹⁸ However, land ownership was only granted to people who occupied land before the law was promulgated, leaving farmers who had settled on land after 2001 without land rights.¹¹⁹

The state banned logging in 2002, ended the forest concession system, and replaced it with an economic land concession (ELC) system.¹²⁰ As part of this process, over two million hectares of land were leased to private companies for seventy years.¹²¹ Social land concessions (SLC) were used to redistribute land to landless farmers.¹²² In response to escalating conflicts between concession holders and individual smallholders, many of whom had been forcibly evicted and dispossessed of their land, the state implemented a new ELC policy in 2012. This enabled the fast-tracking of land titles in areas that overlapped with Economic Land Concessions (ECL) but went much beyond as it also targeted areas identified as ex-forest concessions, protected areas, and production forests.¹²³ The process was interrupted in 2013 after national elections.¹²⁴ The result has been the concentration of thirty percent of all arable land in the hands of one percent of Cambodians.¹²⁵ Importantly, communities have mobilized against this ELC, protesting and submitting petitions while also facing intimidation and violence.¹²⁶

Although specific land control practices are diverse, the redistribution of land has exacerbated the divide between farmers and political elites, which in the northwest has been influenced by former Khmer Rouge soldiers turned warlords.¹²⁷ In some instances, former Khmer Rouge leaders have become members of government. This highlights some of the complexities of land struggles and contradictions between different forms of land control and state formation processes, often negotiated individually between elites and households at the intersection of former Khmer Rouge power structures and the neoliberal state.

Accelerated deforestation in the region has followed the diversification and expansion of cash crops such as maize, cassava, and fruit trees. These processes have increased migration from rice-growing provinces and from refugee camps.¹²⁸ Complex and changing land relations have shaped migration patterns, reflecting the need to access livelihood opportunities and secure land, as well as people’s desires to live in proximity to family and social networks.¹²⁹ Local elites, including village chiefs, have acted as intermediaries between farmers and foreign industrial groups, working as vendors of agricultural inputs and in the commodification and trading of agricultural products.¹³⁰

In 1994 the government created the Council for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) and the Credit Committee for Rural Development (CCRD) to facilitate policy development and coordination between ministries. In addition, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry was replaced by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (MAFF) in 1996. In this new institutional context, agriculture is governed by four national institutions:¹³¹ the MAFF, the Ministry of Rural Development (MRD), the Ministry of Environment (MOE), and the Secretary of State of Women’s Affairs (SSWA). Since the 1990s, multiple projects have been implemented to improve infrastructure and agricultural production. These projects have been funded by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and a wide range of other aid agencies.

Central to the modernization of the Cambodian agricultural sector has been an orientation towards international markets. Agricultural extension programs have been positioned as the means for achieving national aims, including developing and expanding extension systems; improving management, including planning and evaluation systems; building capacity at all levels within extension systems; developing and improving information communication technologies and strategies; developing provincial and district information systems; and supporting the development of farmer organizations.¹³²

Interventions have remained largely crop-oriented, focused on pest management, variety improvement, and integrated nutrient management. However, in practice, few farmers have had access to these services. An estimated one percent of farmers had access to extension services in 2007, with ten percent being women; in 2013, just twenty-seven percent of households were able to access extension services.¹³³ Government efforts in agricultural extension have largely focused on increased rice production for export.¹³⁴ Despite this state focus on rice production, farmers have diversified their activities, seeking access to market opportunities for crops such as maize, cassava, cashews, rambutan, durian, and mangos. However, farmers continue to experience structural and institutional constraints linked to land tenure, market failures, the prevalence of an informal sector, and a limited transport infrastructure.¹³⁵

Current national policy emphasizes diversification of agricultural production as a means to achieve the SDGs. This effort endorses the transformation from “family-owned cultivation to manageable agro-commercial production,” as emphasized by the Cassava National Policy 2020-2025.¹³⁶ The plan envisions increased market-driven agricultural production, enabled by the availability of microcredit.¹³⁷ This trajectory in the context of weak government regulations, the uncertainties and economic toll of the global COVID-19 pandemic,¹³⁸ and climate change¹³⁹ are likely to accelerate land loss, debt-driven migration, and food insecurity amongst smallholder families.¹⁴⁰

Discussion

Our review highlights the value of adding historical context to contemporary agricultural debates and exploring the path-dependent structures that situate contemporary power, land, and farming relations. Our political position foregrounds the rights and struggles of smallholder farmers in order to contribute to more sustainable and equitable agriculture livelihoods. Table 1 contextualizes seven key drivers of agrarian change in Northwest Cambodia, assembled from the literature to reflect the complex forces that have shaped farmer livelihoods. The table is an effort to guide perspectives on long-standing processes (spiritualities, debt and taxes, patronage networks, and migration) as well as more recent changes (increased cash crops, land privatization, and individualized labor). The table also highlights the destructive period of Khmer Rouge rule and the breakdown of social relations and knowledge that, like water and land spirits (mcâs dẏk mcâs ṭī), haunt contemporary efforts to increase productivity and livelihood development. That the sustainable development goals aimed at combating hunger, food insecurity, and poor nutrition remain central suggests that recent changes have been insufficient to grapple with longer term processes, such as financial precarity associated with taxes and debt, ongoing patterns of elite land concentration, and the exploitation of rural laborers.¹⁴¹ Our analysis also suggests that institutions that have demonstrated longevity, such as Buddhist temple communities, continue to be integral to rural life and may provide a resource for collaboratively reimagining ways of supporting rural farmers to realize a good life.¹⁴² In the following sections we discuss these historic trends as they relate to power, land, and farming below.

Power

The prevalence and relevance of patronage networks in shaping power, land, and farming is central to the history of agrarian change in Northwest Cambodia. Complex histories of war, environmental change, and Indigenous and Buddhist ontologies have been at the heart of human and nonhuman relations in Cambodia.¹⁴³ These hierarchical, patron-client relations have historically benefitted the monarchy and provincial authorities as part of efforts to enforce the power of political elites across multiple scales.¹⁴⁴ Importantly, these relations have not been static, but have been shaped by foreign actors, development agencies, private investors, and farmer uprisings – often leading to war and violence. This history establishes a path dependency that is co-productive of what is presently possible.¹⁴⁵ A consistent theme, evident with regards to farmers’ experiences, is the assertion of external power, which controls and profits from agricultural production and trade.¹⁴⁶

For example, the emphasis on rice production during the Angkor period reflected a need to feed the military that enforced the power of the monarchy and chovay srok. The requirement for peasants to produce surplus rice organized agricultural practices as a way of fulfilling external interests and maintaining control of that very system of production. This model of production-consumption was, during the post-Angkor period, connected with regional and international trade, which benefited elite interests. This pattern was retained by French colonial authorities, who facilitated the extraction of agricultural resources to maintain dependency relations. These relations were also central to strengthening anti-communist efforts in Southeast Asia, including the interests of the United States. Perhaps most surprisingly, the Khmer Rouge, despite their agrarian collectivization language, consolidated land for large-scale production, in service yet again to foreign markets. This pattern was covertly maintained by disenchanted Khmer Rouge warlords through illicit border trade and was later entrenched in the peace accords as a way of yoking former revolutionaries into government. During the more recent neoliberal turn, this pattern of elite capture of agricultural production has been a key structural challenge facing agricultural extension efforts to improve farmer livelihood development, as exemplified in the current policy for the promotion of paddy production and export.¹⁴⁷ In this light, from the perspective of smallholder farmers in Northwest Cambodia, initiatives such as the SDGs replicate long histories of externally driven power relations that orient benefits from changed practices towards elites in urban centers or distant global actors, with an assumed but tenuous link between productivity and improved wellbeing.¹⁴⁸ SDG advocates would benefit from recognizing and accepting these historical similarities to understand local interpretations of sustainability proposals, policies, and programs.¹⁴⁹

Land

The complex entanglement between land, social relations, and agricultural transitions in Northwest Cambodia is tied to patterns of migration to, through, and from the region.¹⁵⁰ While past migration patterns were predominantly shaped by war, conflicts, and settlement programs, recent migration trends have been more complex. For example, multiple modes of in-migration, including ex-Khmer Rouge resettlement, refugee repatriation, and voluntary in-migration by farming households from surrounding districts and beyond, have followed the expansion of agricultural land through deforestation. According to the 2008 Census, approximately sixty-eight percent of the population in four frontier districts in Pailin and Battambang were recent migrants.¹⁵¹ At the same time, out-migration driven by debt, dispossession, and the cumulative effects of environmental shocks has become a dominant feature.¹⁵² Out-migration of individual family members for wage employment – whether cyclical or more permanent – carries important implications for the age and sex composition of the left-behind agricultural workforce, smallholder farmers’ investment decisions, and everyday social relations.¹⁵³

Isolation is key to understanding farmers and land in Northwest Cambodia. For example, in the pre-Angkor period, prey lands were considered to be areas of danger and potential harm, encircling rural villages and limiting farmers’ opportunities to forge connections. During the colonial period, authorities controlled trade networks and limited people’s mobility. In the Khmer Rouge period, control over mobility was even stricter, including a forced mass exodus of urban residents into rural regions. In the present period, debt is driving new forms of isolation and mobility, as farmers lose their land or are left searching for wage labor opportunities to pay or flee their debts.¹⁵⁴ Farmers’ isolation stands in contrast to the large-scale development and upgrading of provincial and national road networks in Northwest Cambodia during the last decade.¹⁵⁵

Land is central to these agrarian transitions and to patronage networks that are sustained by the political economy of agrarian production.¹⁵⁶ It is in this context that agricultural extension has been promoted as a means of achieving the SDGs. With a state focus on diversifying agricultural production, crops such as cassava and fruit trees are being promoted, along with new materializations of patron-client relations. Transformations have been facilitated by loans and more efficient technologies to increase crop yields. However, as farmers struggle in response to environmental and financial uncertainty, many are migrating and/or working extended hours, thereby becoming more socially isolated and reliant on distant markets to sustain their livelihoods.¹⁵⁷ In the context of sustainable development, isolation affects the nature of farmers’ market opportunities. The SDGs assume that farmers benefit from higher competition and will receive optimal returns on their activities, typically as a result of competition between actors and market connections. However, farmers in Northwest Cambodia experience extreme price variability at harvest because of market failures rooted in monopolistic relations grounded in production that is oriented towards external objectives and priorities.¹⁵⁸ These historically rooted social relations, which at once isolate farmers and force families to find additional sources of income, are pivotal issues to address in a reimagined program of agricultural production that would contribute to sustainable development and the SDGs.

Farming

Historically, agriculture and food production have been utilized to control rural populations.¹⁵⁹ Food production has been used to feed the militaries that kept people in check during the pre- and post-Angkor periods. Similarly, food production was used to fuel the colonial protectorate, which was a way of keeping royal and military power satiated. Most starkly, agriculture was the basis of Khmer Rouge control. Throughout Cambodia’s history, agricultural production has served the interests of external actors while simultaneously reducing farmers’ agency and autonomy.

Agricultural production in Northwest Cambodia continues to be a means of control, now also shaping the exodus of rural populations to maintain the flows of labor needed for development activities in urban centers.¹⁶⁰ Seen in its historical context, agricultural production not only feeds urban populations and generates export revenue, it maintains patronage networks and keeps rural populations in check. The history of Northwest Cambodian agrarian change reveals a continuous commitment to external interests, often at the expense of farmers’ livelihoods and wellbeing. The monarchy, chovay srok, Phnom Penh rulers, French colonialists, the US government, the Khmer Rouge, contemporary microfinance institutions, international elites, foreign hedge funds, international aid agencies and donors, and the nascent SDG consortium have framed Cambodian farmers as a means for achieving externally determined objectives. Evident throughout is a presumption of power resulting in a disregard for the lives and lived experiences of farmers.¹⁶¹

At present, the government continues to encourage agriculture production for export, equating surplus production with increased farmers’ wellbeing.¹⁶² This approach gives little consideration to the uneven and unjust distribution of benefits and the socio-environmental impacts of industrial agriculture.¹⁶³ Farmers see very little of the profits from these activities, with agricultural extension primarily oriented towards national aims.

Future directions

Our review suggests that the SDGs, and SDG 2 specifically (to “end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture”¹⁶⁴), fit comfortably within a history of agrarian change in Northwest Cambodia. The similarities are striking and somewhat disconcerting. In this context, agricultural extension can be understood as the pointy end of a long-term, consistent orientation towards increased production, which has coalesced around the modernization of Cambodian agricultural production, now framed through the UN’s Strategic Development Goals. But like the historical periods reviewed above, extension-driven SDG2 activities privilege external objectives divorced from the daily lives of Cambodia’s farmers. Proposing solutions that are detached from the local context and the complex social, political, and economic dynamics that shape farmer decision-making produces unrealistic imaginaries of agrarian contexts. Engaging with these complex social and political relations is much more difficult than providing agricultural advice and equipment, but it is crucial if farmers in Northwest Cambodia are to emerge from patterns of intergenerational struggle and exploitation to tackle historically-rooted inequalities. Our review shows that while the traditional focus of agricultural extension in growing improved quantities of quality crops may be desirable,¹⁶⁵ its impact on smallholders will be constrained until historically uneven power relations are mitigated through farmer-oriented reforms.

If governments and intergovernmental institutions like the FAO are to make progress on the Sustainable Development Goals and address trade-offs (e.g. SDG 2 on zero hunger and SDG 10 on reduced inequalities), more than improved seeds, equipment, and knowledge are needed. Our analysis suggests that there has to be a willingness to engage with more difficult social and political issues, including historic patterns of exploitation that situate and suppress rural development. Our review of agrarian change in Northwest Cambodia highlights the value of critically engaging with the history of farming and rural realities to work with farmers and authorities in developing agricultural extension interventions that do not exacerbate conflict and precarity.¹⁶⁶ For instance, migration no longer serves merely as a means to diversify the risks of farming; it has become a preferred route and strategy for households to attain income, food security, and social mobility, including to compensate for low agricultural returns.¹⁶⁷

For agricultural initiatives to foster real benefits for farmers, the international community must prioritize the lived experiences of farmers to understand and transform the political economies of agricultural production, opening spaces for farmers to decide and negotiate what they consider constitutes a good life.¹⁶⁸ Such programs will require moving beyond top-down technocratic approaches and an overreliance on short-term donor funding for market-based solutions. An integrated approach to farming that blurs the lines between agricultural extension and rural development is needed, one that is committed to working with farmers within their social networks. It is pivotal to nurture transdisciplinary pathways and alliances¹⁶⁹ between farmers and key actors within government, the public and private sector, donors, civil society organizations, and research institutions in order to foster collective action and open space for agrarian reform. Central to such an objective are approaches that recognize – and where needed refuse – historical path dependency, accepting that efforts to alter the power, land, and farming structures that shape farmer decision making in the present must include simultaneous appreciation for the past.

Acknowledgments

The research team acknowledges and thanks all participants in the research, especially Cambodian farmers who generously provide their time and insights. Brian Cook thanks Wageningen University Communication and Innovation Studies (CIS) and Sociology of Development and Change (SDC) groups for hosting his research leave while working on this paper.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), as part of the project, “Next generation agricultural extension: Social relations for practice change” (SSS/2019/138).

Notes on contributors

Brian R. Cook

Brian R. Cook is an associate professor at the University of Melbourne. A human geographer, Brian is interested in socio-environmental controversies, especially in the context of public participation in the context of risk.

Paula Satizábal

Paula Satizábal is a postdoctoral researcher at Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity at the University of Oldenburg. A human geographer, Paula is interested in the political ecology of marine governance.

Van Touch

Van Touch is a cropping system researcher based at the University of Melbourne. His professional experiences are around implementing agronomic on-farm research, experimenting crop simulation modelling, analyzing climate change projections, analyzing agricultural market value chains, and coordinating several agricultural research and development projects.

Andrew McGregor

Andrew McGregor is an associate professor at the Macquarie School of Social Sciences. Andrew is a human geographer who studies human-environment interactions in Australia and Southeast Asia.

Jean-Christophe Diepart

Jean-Christophe Diepart is a geo-agronomist based at the School for Field Studies, Cambodia. JC has worked in Cambodia since 2002. He has been involved in various research projects looking at agrarian changes in lowland and upland regions of Cambodia and in the Mekong region as a whole.

Ariane Utomo

Ariane Utomo is a social demographer, working primarily on marriage and family change in Indonesia. Her research examines how the dynamics of demographic and social change relate to attitudes about gender roles; school to work transitions; women’s employment; marriage, fertility and family patterns; and the nature of inequalities and social stratification.

Nicholas Harrigan

Nicholas Harrigan is a senior lecturer in Quantitative Sociology at Macquarie University. His major areas of research include social networks, particularly networks of conflict; low wage migrant workers in Australia and Asia; and participatory approaches to social research.

Katharine McKinnon

Katharine McKinnon is the Director of the Centre for Sustainable Communities at the University of Canberra, and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Community Economies Institute. She is a human geographer with extensive field experience in participatory action research in a range of Asia-Pacific contexts.

Pao Srean

Pao Srean is Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Food Processing at the National University of Battambang, Cambodia. His research has focused on upland and lowland cropping systems in Northwest Cambodia.

Thong Anh Tran

Thong Anh Tran is a human ecologist based at the University of Melbourne. Thong has extensive experience in Mainland Southeast Asia. He researches climate-development dynamics in the Mekong region, with a particular focus on transboundary environmental governance, agrarian transformation, livelihood resilience, and climate change adaptation.

Andrea Babon

Andrea Babon is an environmental social scientist with almost twenty years’ experience working at the interface between research, policy, and practice. Her research focuses on environmental policy and governance through a political ecology lens, examining power relations and equity implications of global environmental governance.

Notes

1 Blesh et al. 2019; Tomlinson 2013.

2 Allahyari et al. 2019; Fraser et al. 2016.

3 Kumi et al. 2014; Leach et al. 2020.

4 Blesh et al. 2019; Hope 2020; Leach et al. 2020.

5 United Nations 2018.

6 CARD 2016.

7 Cook et al. 2021.

8 Li 1999; Ahlborg and Nightingale 2018.

9 MAFF 2015.

10 Bylander, 2014, 2015.

11 MAFF 2015, 1.

12 See Hope 2020.

13 Kem 2017; Mahanty and Milne 2016.

14 Diepart and Dupuis 2014.

15 Mahanty and Milne 2016; Kong et al. 2019; Milne 2015.

16 Diepart and Dupuis 2014; McMichael 2008; Milne and Mahanty 2015a.

17 Diepart and Sem 2016; Green 2019; Li 2014; LICADHO and STT 2019.

18 Gyorvary and Lamb 2021; Montgomery et al. 2017; Touch et al. 2016; Green 2019.

19 Diepart and Sem 2016; Gyorvary and Lamb 2021.

170 Please remove the grey shading of all cells in this table. I have deleted the explanation in the caption. It is too vague and does not add significantly to the paper.

20 Chandler, 2018; Corfield, 2009; Diepart and Dupuis, 2014; Kong, 2019; Slocomb, 2010; Sothirak et al., 2012.

21 Cook et al. 2021.

22 Vickery 1989; Pillot 2007.

23 Pokhrel et al. 2018; Sneddon and Fox 2012.

24 Cramb et al. 2020.

25 Montgomery et al. 2017.

26 Gyallay-Pap 1989; Work 2017, 4.

27 Work 2017.

28 Baek 2010.

29 Beban and Work 2014; Work 2017.

30 Gyallay-Pap 1989; Baek 2010.

31 Han and Lim 2019.

32 Gyallay-Pap 1989; Work 2017.

33 Chandler 1998.

34 Mak 2001.

35 Buckley et al. 2010.

36 See Arensen 2012; Chandler 1998; Diepart and Dupuis 2014, 450.

37 Scott, 2009, 112.

38 Chandler, 2008, 125.

39 Diepart and Dupuis 2014; Greve 1993.

40 Diepart 2015.

41 Hall 2011.

42 Chandler 1998.

43 Klassen et al. 2021.

44 Pottier 2000.

45 Arensen 2012.

46 Gyallay-Pap 1989.

47 Diepart and Dupuis 2014.

48 Vickery 1977.

49 Rungswasdisab 1995.

50 Diepart and Dupuis 2014; Mak 2001; Rungswasdisab 1995.

51 Chandler 2008, 121.

52 Hall 2018.

53 Chandler 1998.

54 Rungswasdisab 1995.

55 Diepart and Dupuis 2014; Rungswasdisab 1995.

56 Cramb et al. 2020; Helmers 1997.

57 Cramb et al. 2020.

58 Chandler 1998.

59 Vickery 2010.

60 Chandler 1998; Diepart and Dupuis 2014.

61 Chandler 1998; Cooke 2007.

62 Diepart 2015, 8; Guillou 2006.

63 Scurrah and Hirsch 2015.

64 Diepart and Dupuis 2014.

65 Diepart and Dupuis 2014.

66 Cooke 2007; Diepart and Dupuis 2014.

67 Chandler 1998; Diepart and Dupuis 2014.

68 Chandler 1998; 1986.

69 Chandler 1998; Diepart and Dupuis 2014.

70 Boserup, 2014.

71 Ke and Babu 2018.

72 Heng et al. 2023; McNamara 2016; Ke and Babu 2018.

73 Vickery 1989.

74 Kiljunen 1984; Owen and Kiernan 2006; Vickery 1989).

75 Diepart and Dupuis 2014.

76 Ibid.

77 Kiernan, 1996.

78 Vickery 1989, 43.

79 Vickery 1989, 43.

80 Bateman 2018; Green 2022b; Green 2023.

81 Diepart and Dupuis 2104.

82 Vickery 1989.

83 Diepart and Dupuis 2014.

84 Chandler, 2018; Clayton, 1998; Lunn, 2004.

85 Clayton, 1998; Lunn, 2004

86 Clayton, 1998; Kiernan, 2003; Raffin, 2012.

87 Diepart and Dupuis 2014.

88 Yang Saing 1999, 20.

89 Chandler 1998; Scurrah and Hirsch 2015.

90 Tyner 2008.

91 Matthew and Rutherford 2003; Merrouche 2011.

92 Williams and Dunn 2003.

93 Raffin, 2012.

94 Himel 2007.

95 Zucker 2008.

96 Diepart and Dupuis 2014.

97 Scurrah and Hirsch 2015.

98 Yang Saing 1999, 20.

99 Biddulph 2014a; Diepart 2015.

100 Le Billon 2002; Barney 2010.

101 Global Witness 2007; Jacobsen and Stuart-Fox 2013; Vickery 2007.

102 Diepart 2015, 12; Le Billon 2002; Jacobsen and Stuart-Fox 2013.

103 Diepart and Dupuis 2014.

104 Matthew and Rutherford 2003, 48. Indeed, access to arable land has been limited with an estimate of at least twenty-five percent of potential agricultural land still littered with landmines and unexploded ordinance.

105 Merrouche 2011.

106 Rodrigues 2023.

107 Diepart 2015.

108 Biddulph 2014a.

109 Yang Saing 1999.

110 Heng et al. 2023.

111 Ke and Babu 2018; Soeun 2012.

112 Ear 2012.

113 Diepart and Dupuis 2014.

114 Yang Saing 1999, 19.

115 Diepart and Dupuis 2014.

116 Diepart and Dupuis 2014; Mahanty 2019; Mahanty and Milne 2016.

117 CCHR 2013, 11.

118 Scurrah and Hirsch 2015.

119 Diepart and Dupuis 2014; Scurrah and Hirsch 2015

120 Scurrah and Hirsch 2015

121 Milne and Mahanty 2015b; Scurrah and Hirsch 2015.

122 Grimsditch and Henderson 2009.

123 Diepart 2015.

124 Müller 2013; Scurrah and Hirsch 2015.

125 Neef et al. 2013, 1086. As an example, the Pheapimex Co., Ltd. ELC, established in 2000, controls 315,928 hectares of land in the provinces of Pursat and Kampong Chhnan, impacting the lives and livelihoods of over 100,000 people in 111 villages (Bandler and Focus on Global South 2018,14).

126 See Bandler and Focus on Global South 2018; Guttal 2014; Lamb et al. 2019.

127 Biddulph 2014b; Diepart and Dupuis 2014.

128 Pilgrim et al. 2012.

129 Diepart and Dupuis 2014.

130 Diepart and Dupuis 2014, 456.

131 Yang Saing 1999, 15.

132 Soeun 2012, 1.

133 Leapheng 2018.

134 RGC 2010.

135 ADB 2012.

136 RGC, 2020.

137 See Green and Estes 2018; Green 2023 for discussion of debt implications.

138 Brickell et al. 2020.

139 Frewer 2021; Marcaida III et al. 2021; Sok et al. 2021; Touch et al. 2020.

140 Bylander 2014, 2015; Pilgrim et al. 2012.

141 Green 2022; Mahanty 2019.

142 McKinnon, Healy, and Dombroski 2019.

143 Beban and Work 2014; Work 2017.

144 Chandler 1998; Diepart 2015.

145 Pente et al. 2015.

146 Mahanty and Milne 2016.

147 Green 2021.

148 Ghosh et al., 2022.

149 Touch et al. 2023.

150 Bylander, 2015.

151 Kong et al. 2019.

152 Bylander 2015; Kong et al. 2019; Pilgrim et al. 2012; Diepart and Ngin 2020.

153 Bylander 2015; Zimmer and Knodel 2013.

154 Green 2022a; Green and Bylander 2021; Natarajan et al. 2021.

155 See Kong et al 2019.

156 Diepart and Dupuis 2014; McMichael 2008; Nam 2020.

157 See Bylander 2015; Mahanty and Milne 2016; Gyorvary and Lamb 2021; Green and Estes 2019; Green 2023.

158 Newby 2018.

159 Bartlett, 2008.

160 Bateman et al. 2019.

161 Frewer 2021.

162 Ghosh et al., 2022.

163 Lichtfouse 2009; Mahanty and Milne 2016.

164 United Nations 2018.

165 Ghosh et al., 2022.

166 Peluso 2012, 86.

167 Bylander 2014; 2015.

168 McKinnon et al. 2019; Dombroski et al. 2019.

169 See Anderson and Leach 2019.