World Food Policy Volume/Issue 2-2/3-1 Fall 2015/Spring 2016 | Page 10

Food Security in Rural Cambodia and Fishing in the Mekong in the Light of Declining Fish Stocks

The household heads are on average 45
years old, 12% of them are female, and
63% of all household heads report to be
literate. This is close to the figure of 65%
literacy in the 25-60 year old population
reported by NCDD (2009). 82% of all
households are ethnic Khmers. Other
important ethnic groups are Kuoy (10%),
Lao (3%), and Kavet (3%). Fishing is
common in all ethnic groups. Most
households are engaged in some kind
of subsistence agriculture with lowland
rainfed rice being the most widespread
subsistence crop and the main staple.
Besides rice, fruits are other important
subsistence crops in terms of the number
of households growing them; however,
the quantity of fruits produced by each
household is low. Irrigation and more
than one rice harvest per year is extremely
rare. Important cash crops are cassava and
rice. Natural resource extraction, such as
fishing, hunting, collecting, or logging, is
another common source of income, along
with family-run small businesses, most
of them without external employees,
and wage employment, for example as
a government official or farm laborer.
Labor migration is rare and there are
no large-scale companies which provide
employment in the province. Further
information on this dataset can be found
in Bühler et al. (2015).

The household survey was
administered in Khmer by a mixedgender team of 15 enumerators. All
of them had previous experience in
socioeconomic household surveys and
were trained during lectures, field days,
and role plays for 1 week before starting

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the survey. About two thirds of the team
was from the capital Phnom Penh, the
rest was recruited locally in the province
of Stung Treng. In the following we use
the data from both survey waves by
pooling them.

As livelihood activities and their
outcomes are closely connected to the
natural cycles of the year in the rhythm
of the dry and rainy season in the area of
Stung Treng, a household’s food security
may change depending on the season.
We collected the data during the end
of the open fishing season (Navy and
Bhattarai 2009) which takes place just
before the rainy season starts and water
levels rise, that is, data on the past week
falls in this season. Food security during
other seasons was captured by asking
specifically for the situation in the past
year’s planting, pre-harvest and postharvest seasons with the main staple
crop, lowland rainfed rice, being the crop
of reference. To capture specific events
of food insecurity we also asked for the
situation in the worst week and worst
month in the past year, according to the
subjective impression of the household.
Measuring Food Security

Today’s most commonly used
definition of food security was adopted
at the World Food Summit in 1996.
Accordingly “Food security exists when
all people, at all times, have physical,
[social]3 and economic access to sufficient
safe and nutritious food that meets their
dietary needs and food preferences for an
active and healthy life” (FAO 1996). Based

The term “social” was added in 2002.

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