Cattle productivity in Cambodia is limited by a number of factors, including poor feeding and animal health practices. With a growing demand for meat in the South-East Asia region there is an opportunity for smallholder farmers to meet this demand and help reduce rural poverty. This report investigates the current position of the cattle market, and specifically smallholder farmers within that market, through the development of a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) assessment, followed by an analytic hierarchy process analysis. The aim was to determine key factors that affect the current state of the smallholder cattle industry, and identify and direct attention to the most important factors. Key factors identified include growing forages to target feed cattle, controlling endemic diseases, improving the accessibility and cost of vaccines, addressing the risks of extreme climate events and the lack of mitigation strategies, and responding to the demand from local traders for cattle of higher body condition and quality. The two most important factors are the uptake and adoption of forage growing and training in target-feeding strategies to improve the value of cattle (strength), and the risk of endemic and trans-boundary diseases to smallholder cattle producers (threat). The identification of these factors will assist in the development of the smallholder cattle industry by prioritising resource allocation to areas that are critical to the success of the industry. Although identifying factors for prioritisation can be used for resource allocation, this analysis is not exhaustive, and other factors such as the lack of a market information system that is accessible to farmers may become key market development constraints.
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