What Limits Agricultural Intensification in Cambodia? The Role of Emigration, Agricultural Extension Services and Credit Constraints

This paper attempts to define the factors which determine emigration and rice doublecropping, i.e. rice cultivation on the same plot twice per year, by rural households in Cambodia, and investigates whether these decisions influence each other using data from a two-period panel survey of 231 households in three provinces in rural Cambodia. In the analysis, we take into account possible correlation between these decisions (through estimating a seemingly unrelated bivariate probit model) and unobserved heterogeneity among farmers (through estimating a random-effects probit model). It is found that rice double-cropping and emigration decisions are not closely inter-related. We can also conclude that the availability of water and agricultural land are the key determinants of rice double-cropping. Households which rely on animal draught power for agricultural production are unlikely to engage in rice double-cropping. Policies aimed at increasing irrigation and providing socioeconomic land concessions in rural areas may play a critical role in improving agricultural production.