“Watch The Water” 

In 2022 places like Southwestern China, which have plagued Cambodia with huge floods in past years, are parched dry and places like India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos have seen record floods. Bangkok was flooded on multiple occasions and all the water was diverted towards Western Cambodia. FCOP prepared this year by adding 1 meter of compacted fill to our paddy dikes making them 3 meters tall (almost 10 feet). FCOP also built 10 large walk-through culverts along with many smaller round concrete culverts, paved more than 32 kilometers of seasonal road with 1/2 meter of laterite, in order to make them passable in the raining season. The dikes held but the roads were not high enough for the torrents of water coming in from Thailand. Although enough rice was harvested to feed the orphans, widows, and staff for 1 year, the sustaining income from the sale of over $500,000.00US of surplus rice was lost due to flooding of the roads. The dikes withheld the floods on FCOP fields, but the roads were cut making access for harvest impossible. Eventually FCOP did harvest some remaining remnants. FCOP had the last crop standing and will pursue further development of the farm in 2023. At FCOP we never give up!  

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