- Your Excellency Veng Sakhon, Minister of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries.
- Your Excellency Ngo Bunthan, Rector of Royal University of Agriculture (RUA).
- Distinguished ladies and gentlemen.
I'm delighted to be here today for this important ‘Delegation Day - Celebrating Partners’ event. I want to thank CE SAIN and Royal University of Agriculture for hosting this event.
Today's event honors delegations from different countries who are here today. Your presence gives us a great opportunity to learn from each other.
We are excited to share our experience in Cambodia with you. Building the Center of Excellence for Sustainable Agriculture Intensification and Nutrition - or CE SAIN - with our partner the Royal University of Agriculture has been a transformative journey.
It has been nearly 20 years since RUA and U.S. universities started working together on sustainable intensification and conservation agriculture technologies. This effort has resulted in increasing crop yield and improving nutrition for Cambodian farmers and their families, while enhancing soil health and water quality.
Building on this foundation, the United States Government launched the Feed the Future initiative in 2010 to address global hunger and food insecurity. Twenty two Feed the Future Innovation Labs, in partnership with more than 70 U.S. universities, lead research on all aspects of food security and nutrition, seeking to address the most pressing global food security challenges.
Six Feed the Future Innovation Labs partnering with 15 U.S. universities are developing research and helping Cambodian institutions to tackle some of the country’s greatest challenges in agriculture and food security.
Since then we have invested $5.5 million in CE SAIN and approximately $30 million in other innovation labs to improve livelihoods and nutrition in Cambodia. CE SAIN has supported 56 scholars to secure graduate and postgraduate degrees, developed 28 new innovative technologies ready to scale up, and helped 5,000 individuals learn new technologies showcased in the Tech Parks over the past five years.
I am thrilled that you will visit CE SAIN Technology Parks in Kampong Cham and Kampong Thom where you will see the technologies developed by the Innovation Labs. In addition, you will see how high school students learn about agricultural research and begin to build professional careers in agriculture.
Cambodia has a very young population so training and investing in its youth are critical to the country’s prosperity and economic growth. To do this, we need modern classes and course content that gives young people the tools they need to innovate and advance an evolving agricultural sector. CE SAIN does this by giving high school students scholarships to pursue higher education at RUA so that – one day – they can give back to their communities.
Today's event is not only an opportunity to learn about the research conducted here at RUA and the lessons learned from CE SAIN, but also the opportunities for collaboration with all of you who come to us from different continents, climates, and agricultural systems.
Thank you all for being here. We are committed to working with you and supporting your efforts to strengthen agriculture, food security, and nutrition. I am proud of what we have accomplished together in the past, and I look forward to accomplishing much more in the future.
Thank you.