We have been doing everything possible to expand our rice production to take in smaller tracts, level them, and create larger, more efficient fields. The magic is our laser-guided chain scraper. This meant trading, buying and renting various pieces of land to create a homogeneous whole. This is tough enough when you have some money from last year to work with, but we finished the year flat broke, but at least out of debt. We’d gotten some valuable help to purchase some strategic tracts but there was one piece that we desperately need to connect with one of our isolated fields. A generous donor offered to send $35,000USD to take care of this, so I proceeded only to find out after I’d signed the contract that he’d had a business setback and suffered a heart attack. We put anything and everything up for sale; tractors, combine, land, but there was no cash! On the last day of the month a benefactor came through with the rescue!

The rice crop is 2/3 planted and the new land limed, leveled and fertilized. The key now is to get a better source of nitrogen fertilizer. We found it in the form of ammonium sulphate out of China. I ordered 50 tons, paid in full, only to find out that the government won’t allow it in the country without a huge incentive and investigation, which means it won’t help me this year. I was bummed! All of a sudden I get a call from a friend who lives at one of the foreign embassies in town and he is anxious for me to meet a very high official who has a great interest in agriculture, especially in how Cambodia can raise the rice yield. Well, I had a short answer, “Import Ammonium Sulphate!” It looks much more hopeful now.