APOPO’s HeroTREEs department asked ECOTOP to assess whether dynamic agroforestry can work for smallholder cashew farmers in Preah Vihear Province, in the north of Cambodia, and to train the people who will put it into practice.
The first mission took place in June 2026: two weeks of field diagnosis, three training formats and the first demonstration plots. It opens a five-year collaboration in which test plots with farmers come first and scaling up follows once the results are in.
Farming in Preah Vihear is dominated by cashew, cassava and rice on land that is increasingly exposed to irregular rainfall, heat and waterlogging. Through its Minefields to Ricefields programme, APOPO accompanies families who resettle on land released from mine clearance, much of which is moving into cashew. At the same time the province wants to become a leading region for organic farming.
Cashew in a dynamic agroforestry system is not new ground for ECOTOP. In Burkina Faso, yields on plots converted to DAF rose from about 266 to 654 kg per hectare within three years. The question in Cambodia is how the same principles translate to local soils, climate and farm organisation.
The assignment therefore combined a diagnosis of the existing cashew systems, from soils and pest pressure to extension services and markets, with training that gives farmers and technicians the tools to design and manage their own plots.
The June 2026 mission covered four steps:
• Feasibility assessment of site conditions, farming systems and the organisational set-up, together with APOPO and the Cambodian Institute for Research and Development (CIRD)
• Three trainings: an open training for organisations with farmer networks, a training for the implementation partner, and a training inside APOPO’s Minefields to Ricefields project
• Establishment of demonstration plots, including pruning and rehabilitation of existing cashew plantations, selective weeding and biomass management
• Recommendations and priority actions for the test-plot phase and later scaling
APOPO HeroTREEs – the Belgian NGO’s department for biodiversity, climate action and farmer livelihoods through syntropic agroforestry, and lead of the Syntropic Agroforestry Innovation Accelerator (SAIA) in Tanzania and Cambodia.
CIRD – Cambodian Institute for Research and Development, local partner in Preah Vihear.
