Partnering with the Private Sector to Strengthen the Cambodian Agriculture Sector
Highlights
- Harvest III and its private sector partners are co-investing in strengthening Cambodia’s agriculture market systems.
- Partners’ innovative approaches—including climate-smart technologies—boost competitiveness in traditional, modern, and export markets.
- Simultaneously, they are expanding economic opportunities for women, youth, and other marginalized groups.
The agriculture sector must become more competitive, resilient, and inclusive to support Cambodia’s economic growth and the many Cambodians dependent on agriculture as their main source of income.
This means improving access to finance, boosting value addition, mitigating and adapting to climatic risks, and raising quality and adherence to safety standards. In addition, it requires increasing access to agricultural services, improving supply chain efficiency, and advancing the use of formal agreements among market actors. For the agriculture sector to thrive and contribute to broad-based economic growth, it must also expand economic opportunities for women, youth, and other marginalized groups as entrepreneurs, workers, and suppliers.
Harvest III partners with a wide array of capable and results-oriented local market actors: producer associations, agribusinesses, service and technology providers, financial institutions, and investors. Most of Harvest III’s partnerships with the private sector involve milestone-based grants under its large grants program. The project and its partners co-invest in activities to generate returns for both the grantee and the agriculture sector.
Harvest III works with partners to co-design grants that strengthen capacity, increase investment, improve supply chain performance, increase market linkages, create new and better jobs, and address climate challenges. The grants aim to help women, youth, and other historically excluded groups capture greater economic gains. The grants also strive to create broad-based benefits, including improved food safety and sustainable economic growth in domestic, regional, and international markets.
Over a five-year period, Harvest III will work in partnership with over 100 private sector companies to mobilize $38 million in private sector investment and $15 million in agriculture-related financing. We also expect our partners to generate $100 million in sales and 3,200 jobs.