Change management for sustainable foot-and-mouth disease control in Cambodia

Abstract

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is endemic in Cambodia and severely impacts smallholder cattle farming households, hindering market development and trade opportunities, plus food security and poverty alleviation. To improve understanding of drivers that may enable adoption of FMD biosecurity measures, change management factors were examined, including motivation for change, resistance to change, knowledge management, cultural dimensions, systems theory and leadership. Knowledge, attitudes and practices surveys (KAP) found smallholder farmer baseline biosecurity was very low, with farmers regularly exposed to disease outbreaks. A cost-benefit analysis of a 5-year national FMD vaccination campaign was conducted, with results predicting a benefit-cost ratio of 6.05 (95% CI 4.11–9.55) if the epizootic was avoided in Year 1, and 1.40 (95% CI 0.96–2.20) if avoided in Year 5, based on the assumption of one major epizootic in the 5-year period. To evaluate the delivery of a systems approach incorporating both cattle health and productivity interventions, farmers from three ‘high intervention’ villages incrementally received a participatory extension programme that included FMD vaccination, forage development and livestock husbandry training. Evaluation of project impacts on livelihoods was facilitated by comparison with three ‘low intervention’ villages where farmers received vaccinations for their cattle only. Results of KAP and socioeconomic surveys identified that farmer KAP in the high intervention project sites exceeded low intervention farmer KAP, and this translated to higher household incomes (P<0.001). It was concluded that the greatest opportunity for FMD control lies with linking biosecurity with improved livestock productivity, addressing smallholder cattle farmer KAP of biosecurity, internal parasites, nutrition, marketing and reproduction practices to enable farmer-led decisions, offering a pathway to improved livelihoods through sustainable change management.