Young Farmers

Koh Kong, Cambodia, 10 miles from Thai border.  Wednesday.

We meet a Khmer man called Paddy ... not certain this is his real name! He runs a bar, has a tuk tuk, smiles alot and is a cool dude.  He takes us to the river.  We meet Noy.  Noy is one more notch up on the cool dude numeric scale compared to Paddy ... which is saying something.

Noy speaks excellent English.  He takes us to a tiny village 30 minutes up river.  Each family has their farm of between 1 to 5 hectares. They grow melons, lemongrass, sugarcane, sandalwood and funny looking fruit that I don't recognise.

The people live on very little here but the entrepreneurs amongst them harvest and sell their excess produce in Koh Kong market.  

There is one in particular who - having been prosecuted for growing marijuana elsewhere (!!) - moved into the village to start again.  He tried doing different things (crops, irrigation methods, fertiliser etc.). Some things were successful.  The other villagers started copying him.  Here was the innovator and driver of wealth creation not just for himself but indirectly a whole community .... I reflect that this might be the closest person to a new entrant I'll come across in Cambodia.

We stop at a rickety bamboo bridge and we direct another question to Noy ... He answers ... These moments are special and sweet ... We realise he is a first generation farmer ... More questions follow and we realise he is an innovator ... We realise he has an education, an immense knowledge and a mind with its gates wide open. He told us that when he decided to farm, he came to a village ... asked about land ... and was pointed in a direction and told "help yourself". I am so excited I consider wetting myself.

As we continue I also realise this is probably the most extreme first generation farmer I have met. You see, Noy was born in a refugee camp over the Thai border and stayed there until he was 12.  His English is excellent because the UN taught him the language in the camp. He doesn't know what day he was born as everyone was disorientated as they fled from Cambodia. He never has a birthday.

The camp was hell. Thai soldiers guarded its perimeter with guns and unsmiling stares. No one was allowed to leave. Largely, made up of women and children, if a female strayed too far from the main group they were likely to be raped by the guards.  Food was something that was always given .... never found, harvested, purchased or sold.

I asked him why he wanted to farm ... his quick and definite response was a single word that came from a deep, deep place .... "Freedom". 

The lady that shows us round explains how she lost her father, a brother and a sister to Pol Pot. How Phnom Penh was evacuated in 1975 and she, as a six year old, walked for two weeks to find safety. She explains that the torturers were largely children. They were brutalised and brainwashed in jungle camps before being sent to do evil upon their fellow people.

We walk the busy streets of a city once deserted ... and people smile ... we travel by tuk tuk ... and people wave. I realise all these people will have fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, cousins or grandparents that died during the regime and the famine afterwards. 2 million died, 1 million fled the country ... out of a 7 million population. That's the equivalent of 17 million dying in the UK today; and over 8 Million fleeing as refugees. But the smiles and waves have so much more meaning here ... displaced people can still find a place for gentleness ... horror and sadness can be overcome ... me moaning about the lack of rungs on the farming ladder feels incredibly pathetic.

24 hours. 5 minutes sleep. 6,000 miles. We are in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Straight off the plane. A tuk tuk ride - sything through the heat, smells and madness of an alien culture - to the Royal Agricultural University to meet the Rector ... the main man.

With excellent English and endless patience for daft questions he draws the skeleton of Cambodian agriculture so we might be able to add bits of flesh at a later date.

He spoke of the future mostly. The one time he dwelt on the past he became emotional. By 2015 Cambodia wants to be the third largest exporter of rice in the world. The target is 1 million tonnes exported. In 2011 they officially export nothing.  Already though, in the last 10 years, they have increased their average yield from 0.9 tonnes per hectare to 2.7 tonnes.  New varieties, irrigation, double cropping have all helped.

Before Pol Pot - in 1974 - 85% of the population were farmers.  Now it stands at 74%. 2 Hectares of Rice paddy makes a decent living especially if it can be double cropped. Yet most have around 1 hectare, many can't double crop.  

Corporate agriculture is now gaining momentum. As there is no legally effective deeds of ownership, companies have started farming smaller farmers' land.

The land price has increased from $1,000 per hectare in the recent past to $15,000.

But the one question I wanted a different answer than I got was in relation to New Entrants.  The brutal facts are 1. No one aspires to farm (too hard and looked down on) and 2. Most of the population have a direct family link to a farm anyway.  As my study is on aspirational new entrants from non-farming backgrounds, I briefly consider my stupidity for not thinking the trip through ... I should really go back to the airport ... but then cold beer amidst the craziness of Phnom Penh with two fine Welsh gentlemen was too hard to resist.