Growing together:
The origins of local development

Lemongrass

(Lat. Cymbopogon Citratus)

An alternative to fight against deforestation and poverty.

Nested in the heart of the rain forest in the Cardamom mountains on the west side of Cambodia, the small community of Tataileu counts around 250 families whose first activities focuses on banana cropping.
Particularly fertile and protected from external pollution the isolation of this small valley preserve its environment and stands as its curse as well its blessing. Indeed, the fragile banana regime transportation and therefor the profitability of the main valley incomes are widely depending on the driving conditions of the small dirt road that lead to it and whether transportation means will pass during sensitive moment such as monsoon. Farmers are then always led to increase their production to compensate the loss due the unreliable logistics and are too often tempted to gain on the forest area to extend their cropping surface.

A community based project

Community based British NGO since 2000, Fauna & Flora International (FFI) has for first aim to raise awareness of farmers regarding the preservation of their extraordinary environment. Combining a rational and comprehensive approach, Bodia and FFI have proposed the Tataileu community to work together on an additional revenue generating project in order to diversify the activities and avoid the crops expansion. The production and the establishment of a reliable supply chain of Lemongrass essential oil.