Merciless Merchants

Farmers in Cambodia have proven to be expendable. It seems the government’s focus is to keep the masses in the cities happy with cheap rice and allow the merchants to extort as much taxable gain as possible from the farmers. The results may prove to be catastrophic!  Farmers are getting paid less for rice this year than last, yet fertilizer prices and other input prices have been allowed to triple! Faith is the only reason to plant a crop. Even with ideal yields, at current prices, farmers are planting into a guaranteed loss! So, why do it?

We know we must feed our people despite our profit. We can no longer rely on imports to save us. China has made the sale of urea fertilizer, the main nitrogen source for rice in Cambodia, illegal to export! The fertilizer that they can export, ammonium sulphate, is illegal to sell in Cambodia! Talk about being between a ‘rock and a hard place’! Now, the government is making the most effective rat and crab poisons illegal to sell here. Rats or crabs can wipe out an entire crop.

China controls the water levels in Cambodia’s rivers and the commercial rice milling and marketing. Farmers are really up against the wall. The only solution is to develop reliable sources and methods of farming that are sustainable within Cambodia, which requires dikes, roads, canals, reservoirs, culverts, milling, marketing and expensive inputs which no farmer has the capital to invest. FCOP must plant and must have the wisdom of God. "Holy Spirit lead us” is our prayer!

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