Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in Asia. Nearly 80 percent of its population lives in rural areas and works in the agricultural sector, as few other job opportunities exist. Decades of conflict, beginning in the 1970s and continuing until nearly 25 years later, have left Cambodia’s agricultural sector lagging behind those of neighboring Vietnam and Thailand. Agriculture in Cambodia is characterized by rice monoculture, which can lead to soil degradation, and low crop yields. Widespread poverty has led to destructive and illegal logging in Cambodia’s rainforests.
BB2C’s Work
BB2C sees all poor farmers in Cambodia as potential entrepreneurs. From the start, all farmers in the areas where we work have some critical assets:
- A small plot of land
- Farming skills
- Time
- Energy
- The water beneath their feet
This pump in Chhouk Kranhas uses bicycle tires and pedals to form the pulley used to draw water. A hand-made trough sits to the right. However, though ingenious, this pump is not as effective as KickStart's Super MoneyMaker.
Cambodian farmers have another advantage: At present, Cambodia imports an estimated 95 percent of its vegetables from abroad. This disparity creates vast economic opportunity for Cambodians who grow vegetables. Vegetable farming will also provide crop rotation to help nourish soil degraded by constant rice production.
We sought to formulate a way to help Cambodian farmers escape poverty that used these assets and took advantage of this market niche, while also helping to minimize environmental destruction, and settled upon an improved irrigation technique ideal for use with vegetable crops.
Access to water is key to farmers’ ability to generate income and escape poverty. While the Cambodian villagers we work with have sources of water for farming, getting that water to their land is costly and onerous. Often villagers carry water to their fields in buckets.
KickStart’s Super MoneyMaker Pump
We searched exhaustively for a simple, low-cost micro-irrigation technology to help farmers irrigate more easily. We found what we were looking for in Africa—a pump developed by KickStart, a not-for-profit organization based in Kenya. KickStart’s Super MoneyMaker pump has helped countless farmers in Africa move from subsistence farming to commercial agriculture. We believe that it can do the same for Cambodian farmers.
In 2011, after two years of research, farmer surveys and pump testing in Cambodia, BB2C brought the simple and effective Super MoneyMaker pump to Cambodia for the first time. The pump represents a significant improvement over other pumps currently available in Cambodia. The Super MoneyMaker is durable, easy to use and compatible with both existing water sources and a variety of crops grown in Cambodia. It easily meets the needs of small farmers with 1-2 acres of land.
We sell the pumps rather than giving them away because investing in the pumps strengthens farmers’ commitment to make good use of them—lifting their families out of poverty in the process.
Marketing The Pumps
Effective marketing is essential to BB2C’s mission. At $95, the Super MoneyMaker pump represents a very significant investment for Cambodian farmers—sometimes as much as a quarter of a family’s annual income. If a farmer buys a pump and it fails to increase his or her harvests, that farmer’s family might go hungry for months. As a result, farmers are understandably risk-averse, and BB2C spends a lot of time—and the majority of our resources—building awareness of and trust in the tools we offer. Often we must return to a village several times before farmers are willing to commit to buying a pump.
We market our pumps by demonstrating them at community meetings. Our staff works closely and respectfully with village leaders, demonstrating our pumps to them before engaging with other villagers.
Measuring Our Impact
BB2C uses systematic methods to evaluate our impact. We try to visit a significant number of pump buyers within one month of purchase—before they have seen much impact—in order to take baseline measurements of customers’ incomes, health and education. We return at six months, 12 months, 18 months and three years after purchase, and measure the changes in farmers’ incomes and quality of life.
A Cambodian Pump
In order to expand our impact, BB2C is in the process of developing a more affordable, Cambodian-made pump using local materials.
Although the Super MoneyMaker is excellent, at $95 it is unaffordable for most Cambodian farmers. Much of the reason for the Super MoneyMaker’s high cost is the fact that it must be imported from China.
Our Cambodian engineers have created a working pump prototype, but it costs $85. We are working to bring its cost down to $50, a price that will make it accessible to many more farmers.
