Profit with purpose: strengthening Cambodian farming with climate-smart practices

As an agricultural economist championing fair returns for Cambodian farmers, Noualyny’s work goes well beyond the walls of her office. She often travels from the busy streets of Phnom Penh to the more placid provinces of Battambang and Siem Reap, on the road for hours to meet farmers and support the WAT4CAM provincial project team.

Whether it is a weekend call for advice or update from the field, Noualyny always picks up. Her hands-on, people-first approach sometimes leaves little time at home, but she lives by a simple rule: if someone in the project needs her, she shows up.

It is a busy life being an advocate of Cambodian farmers but for Noualyny, it is a small price to pay. Growing up in Kandal province, she witnessed first-hand her grandfather’s back-breaking labour as a paddy rice farmer, tending and cultivating his crops daily. And equally how fragile livelihoods can be shaken when external factors come into play.

“I became very motivated by the idea that if we can improve market access, productivity, and sustainability, we’re not only improving crop yields. We’re also improving the farmers’ livelihoods,” Noualyny explains.

In her work with WAT4CAM today, she is doing just that.

Witnessing the positive impact of scaling agro-ecological practices

Through the fourth component of WAT4CAM, Noualyny and the team are supporting innovative, agro‑ecology‑based farming — a sustainable and people-centred approach — to make the rice value chains in Battambang, Siem Reap, Kampong Thom, and Preah Vihea more resilient.

A key pathway to achieving this is promoting certification under the Sustainable Rice Platform (SRP). SRP certification supports farmers to adopt climate-smart, resource-efficient rice production practices that reduce costs, improve yields and grain quality, and open access to higher-value markets, making environmentally responsible farming more profitable, not less.

At first, Noualyny experienced pushback when encouraging agricultural labourers (particularly a union of cooperatives representing hundreds of farmers) to attain SRP certification.

“Some years ago, I asked the chief of union to apply for SRP certification, but she didn’t trust me,” Noualyny recalls. “She even made me promise to reimburse her payment if ever the endeavour failed. I told her I’d do everything to make sure this decision got her results.”

Since its establishment in 2017, the union had struggled to generate meaningful returns. But in 2024, after acquiring SRP certification through WAT4CAM, it earned KHR 80 million in profit (nearly EUR 17,000) — a dramatic turnaround that demonstrated the commercial value of sustainable production. The chief of union was impressed.

“After seeing the results, she now knows our value. She owes this win to the SRP certification done with the help of WAT4CAM,” she adds.

It was a watershed moment for Noualyny who, since her youth, had heard time and again the age-old notion that Cambodian farmers cannot earn a liveable wage. “I wanted to change this narrative,” she says, and the union earning KHR 80 million in a year through innovative practices is evidence she is on the right path.

Passionate about the work she does, Noualyny envisions a future where farmers can live decently and with dignity. In addition to the union’s success, she has heard directly about life-changing gains. Some farmers now make enough money to send their children to university, a cost that is often out of reach on a farmer’s wage.

Cultivating change, grain by grain

Since joining NIRAS in 2022, Noualyny has found the space and people that enable her purpose of improving livelihoods, especially for youth and smallholder farmers. Her manager and the Country Director of NIRAS Cambodia André Ban put his full faith in her decisions, which led clients to commend her leadership and resulted in a 14-month extension of NIRAS’ contract with WAT4CAM.

NIRAS has a supportive environment, she says, and it is where she feels at home given how the company’s mission aligns with her own.

“Globally and in Cambodia, NIRAS has an impact-oriented culture,” she adds. “I really appreciate the openness to innovation and the trust given to staff to take initiative.”

As for André, working with Noualyny has been a tremendous help to the Cambodia office: “Alyny’s unwavering commitment, proactive approach, and effective communication with the technical assistance team, as well as with our clients, have been highly commendable. Her efforts have played a pivotal role in securing a significant achievement for both the project and the organisation, and her technical expertise in agro-ecology, SRP rice practices, and crop diversification has significantly contributed to improving the livelihoods of farmers and strengthening farmer cooperatives. She’s invaluable for our continued success.”

Whether she is visiting farmers and agricultural cooperatives or answering weekend calls, Noualyny is driven by a simple goal: to hear the true story of people’s realities — and help form solutions that could support them.

In the future, she hopes more Cambodian youth will see a future in agriculture. They do not all need to be farmers, she notes. They can become innovators, entrepreneurs, and problem-solvers who place sustainable farming at the core of their work. This way, the sector thrives with powerful innovations and a steady flow of talent.

Until then, Noualyny keeps showing up — championing a more sustainable and equitable agricultural sector so farmers, like her grandfather, can reap what they worked hard to sow.