To support agro-ecology transition in Cambodia as well as in the region, E-learning course on agro-ecology is developed under the project Innovative Pedagogical Resources in Conservation Agriculture in South-East Asia (IPERCA) funded by Agropolis Foundation and the complementary funding from the French Development Agency (AFD) through ACTAE/CANSEA project. This initiative brings together the E-learning Center of the Institute of Technology of Cambodia (ITC), the Royal University of Agriculture (RUA) and the Center of Excellence on Sustainable Agricultural Intensification and Nutrition (CE SAIN), the University of Battambang (UBB), the Department of Agricultural Land Resources Management (GDA/DALRM), the Conservation Agriculture Service Center (CASC/DALRM), the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD) and the TICE team from SupAgro, Montpellier, France.
The e-learning course on agro-ecology cover 4 main dimensions that contain in total 10 courses for an agro-ecological transition:
- Co-design agro-ecological practices
1.1. Cover crop
1.2. Building a healthy soil
1.3. Conservation Agriculture (CA) and Direct seeding Mulch based Cropping systems (DMC)
- Support the transition to agro-ecological practices
2.1. Agrarian system analysis and diagnosis
2.2. Land Use and Land Cover Changes, Northwestern Uplands of Cambodia
2.3. Agrarian transition and opportunity windows for agro-ecological transition
- Adapt appropriate-scale mechanization
3.1. A versatile machinery for Conservation Agriculture and Agro-ecology practices
3.2. Laser land leveling
- Quantify the efficiency and impacts of agro-ecological practices
4.1. Soil aggregates
4.2. Soil organic matter
The course is being under publicly released to disseminate the agro-ecological knowledge to larger audiences, not only the students of agricultural universities, but also the agro-ecological practitioners. As the first step, two courses are now accessible for the publics:
- Agrarian System Analysis and Diagnosis, developed by Dr. Malyne NEANG, former director of Ecoland center, Royal University of Agriculture.
The course introduces “holistic approach” to comprehensively understand the agricultural systems, or simply to answer the common question on “why farmers do what they are doing?”. The approach combines three steps: i). Landscape reading, ii). Agrarian history studying, and iii). Assessing the performances of agricultural production systems.
- Land Use and Land Cover Changes, Northwestern Uplands of Cambodia, developed by Dr. Rada KONG, national agro-ecology coordinator of Conservation Agriculture Services Center (CASC) of Department of Agricultural Land Resources Management (DALRM).
The course introduces a case study on “land uses and land changes in the Northwestern uplands of Cambodia”, where, Pailin and uplands of Battambang, used to be the battle fields of civil war and the last strongholds of Khmer Rouge. As part of peace establishment through the government’s win-win policy for the integration of Khmer Rouge, the largest ever forest land was allocated for national scale demobilization of military leading to dramatic changes from forest to crop land. After then, the farming is in transition. The study quantifies the changes, explains the process and analyzes the causes of the changes.
To access to the course, please go to https://moodle.itc.edu.kh/, and then under the course categories choose “agroecology”, and then “To support the transition to agro-ecological practices”. You may select one of the two courses above as you wish. For login, please select “login as guest” as illustrated in the figure below.
Enjoy your course! New courses will be released in the next steps.
