A rural herder and farmer finds comfort in his cattle as Cambodia’s rapid pace of change passes him by.

By Ten Soksreinith | VOA Khmer | June 26, 2018
អានអត្ថបទ​នេះជាភាសាខ្មែរ

Tram Kak Commune, Takeo Province Cattle are Prem Buth’s constant companions.

The 34-year-old farmer wakes at 5 a.m. every morning to begin his daily chores on the small plot of land his family has worked for generations. His first task is always to tend to his three cows, who will accompany him for the rest of the day. He brings them to breakfast on grass and pond-water. Then, together, they plow the land. At sunset, they return home together: the cows to their wooden shed, and Prem Buth to his concrete house next door.

Like most rural Cambodians, Prem labors in the informal economy, scraping together a living by farming two types of rice on his 1.5 hectares of paddy field, and repairing his neighbors’ bicycles and motorbikes. His village is just 50 miles south of Phnom Penh, but he has been to the capital city only three times in his life.

Still, he has a strong sense that he is being affected by the broader political and economic changes taking place in Cambodia, although he does not fully understand them. What frustrates him the most is that he is feeling the negative effects of modernization—rising prices, increasing inequality—while the benefits like paved roads seem to be passing him by.

The biggest problem in his life? “The inflation rate,” he said in a recent interview beneath the grove of coconut trees that fringe the lily pond where his cows drink and bathe.

Prem’s frustrations with rising costs and a lack of public services led him to vote in June 2017 to change his commune leadership. He and over 3,000 of his neighbors in Tram Kak elected a new commune chief representing the country’s main opposition party, Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP). It was part of the largest-ever opposition influx into local government in Cambodia’s history.

But almost as soon as they took office, the commune chief and other CNRP commune council members were ousted by a court ruling in November 2017 to dissolve the CNRP. The long-ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) alleged that the opposition was complicit in treason.

“People in Tram Kak voted for [the CNRP]. This is a violation of our rights,” said Prem.

“We voted for a change, but that did not happen.”

Now a crucial national election is scheduled to be held on July 29. Prem is planning to cast a vote once again, although he is not yet sure which party or person he will endorse. He says he is not particularly political—he just craves a better standard of living.

“I don’t mind which party runs the country as long as the inflation rate goes down, the price of gasoline goes down, and we have paved roads and access to electricity,” he said. “That would be good.”

Over the past few years, he says, prices for essential manufactured goods and food have risen, even as the price of rice has remained stagnant. He has already reduced his herd of cattle from five to three, selling two cows to raise money to buy the fertilizer and pesticides he needs to keep farming.

As a country whose manufacturing capability is largely limited to garments, Cambodia relies heavily on imported products to support the lifestyle of its growing population. In 2016, the country spent $11.7 billion on imported products, including fabric, machinery, electronics, petroleum, and automobiles, out of a gross domestic product (GDP) of around $20 billion.

According to the World Bank, Cambodia’s inflation rate rose from 2.8 percent in 2015 to 3.69 percent in 2016, before falling again to 2.6 percent in 2017. But Prem’s perception is that manufactured and imported goods are still too pricey. He says it is hard to buy what he needs for his motorbike repairs, and even harder to acquire the expensive inputs he needs as a farmer.

“I used to pay 15,000 riel [around $3.75] to purchase a bottle of oil for my customers,” said Prem. “Now I have to pay 16,000 riel for a bottle, and because of that I have to charge a higher fee for the service. [Customers] are starting to complain.”

“Farmers rely on our local products, chickens, cows, vegetables, pigs, and their prices must go up, so that our livelihood is improving. The inflation rate needs to go down, and there should be regulation on prices of imported products.”

At the same time, the market for agricultural commodities has remained stagnant. Prem says he harvests between two to three tons of paddy rice at the end of each growing season, and keeps half for household consumption because selling it is barely worth the effort. The rest, he sells for around 800 riel ($0.20) per kilogram, netting him just $275 per year.

It is a lower price than he could get if he waited to properly dry the grain, but he does not have the capital, access to infrastructure, or government or industry-level support to install a proper drying facility on his land and wait. There is also not a reliable national system of rice millers and middlemen, meaning that he could not be sure to sell the dried rice at the optimal time anyway. Instead, he sells lower-quality paddy rice in order to raise enough to buy fertilizers and pesticides for the next growing season.

“I sell some rice only to get the capital to reinvest in the new season,” he said.

Without a more profitable market for agricultural products or national-level support for rice growers, days spent without financial worries are rare for Prem. He says his family’s base income of about $250 per month, earned by his wife, who is a primary school teacher, depletes quickly because the prices of meat, fish and other market staples keep creeping up. In addition to their two sons, the couple also support Prem’s elderly parents.

He has other problems too. For farmers, particularly in a monsoonal country like Cambodia with pronounced wet and dry seasons, an irrigation system is crucial. But in Prem’s village, Trapeang Russei, there is no public water system at all. This makes it difficult for him to grow more than one rice crop per year.

When there is not enough rain, Prem pumps water from his lily pond to his fields. His family, like the other 500 residents of Trapeang Russei, also collects rain for drinking and household chores.

“Other communes have access to clean water, but not us,” Prem said. “We need access to electricity and clean water.”

Prem and his neighbors also dream of paved roads. The only road connecting his home to the local market is very narrow, a one-way track, built by piling dirt between two plots of farmland.

“Having paved roads would improve our livelihood, because it would give us better access to the market to sell our local products,” he said.

Standing on the edge of his farmland, watching his cows munching on weeds in the field, Prem pointed to the village’s hard-won dirt track. “It was built through the effort of villagers. No such effort was ever initiated by the commune leadership.”

But whether or not the irrigation and roads arrive one day, times are changing and Prem is beginning to think that rice farming may never be able to support the lifestyle he hopes to achieve.

Discouraged by the seemingly endless challenges of farming, he is increasingly focusing on his motorcycle repair business, which can earn him $5 to $10 per day if he is lucky. Still, he is determined not to give up the three cows left in his herd.

“I care about them,” he said, “because they are part of my life.”