The rice was almost ready to harvest…

There is an enemy who does not want to see FCOP succeed. We needed a rice drying platform, and even with the help of some special friends, “We were a day late and a dollar short”,  we finished it a week late. Even with almost 50 of our young people pitching gravel without rest, it wasn’t fast enough. The Chinese decided to pull the flush valve on their bulging dams, and a three foot high wall of water washed across our land in one night.

We lost almost 30 hectares of rice. It would have been gone completely had it not been for the ditching and diking we completed early this year. If we could just get some good equipment to get this job done our orphans would not be so dependent on our generous foreign donors. Still, we harvested twice the rice as any other year with some fields averaging 8 tons per hectare. Even with the loss our average yield was slightly over 5 tons per hectare. We owe our underpaid, hard working, dedicated Cambodian staff a huge debt of gratitude!