Soft raindrops are blown by the wind covering the view of the countryside with mist, and we cannot see things clearly as we look in the far distance. The grey shadow of a man in the field is walking and following a pair of cows, as he is plowing his field preparing for rice plantation in the early part of the rainy season in June. As we look towards a small paddy field located near the canal, there are some people including ladies and a couple of young kids who are busy pulling out the young rice plants and tying them up into bunches and stacking them up on a wooden-ox-cart. In the next field, a dozen or more people are standing in row in the ankle-deep of water, bending their bodies forward with their left hand holding a bunch of young rice plants and their right hand is pushing a single plant of rice into the soil. That is a typical view on a paddy field in Cambodia, during the rainy season.
After the first two months of the rainy season, all paddy fields are filled with young rice plants which look green and fresh with the wind blowing across the land creating waves on the surface of the paddy fields. Farmers are released from their busy work schedules, and they would have some time to stay at home, look after their children and sometimes go to the field for pulling out unnecessary plants, weeds or grass. Natural fertilizer had been simply put together by combining cattle-dung, dry leaves and straw and used in to the field to increase their output.
Another three or four months later, rice in the paddy fields starts to get ripe, turning its color from green to a soft golden yellow. The sunlight in the morning and evening spreads its red-yellow light on to the soft yellow of the ripe rice creating an amazing view in the paddy field like a large rug lying on earth. A puppet made by straws wearing an old cloth and palm-leaves-hat, is standing in the field like a guard to scare the birds from eating the young rice. Farmers start being busy again with the advent of the harvest season. Several families exchange their labor forces by forming a group which we can call them a “solidarity group” to harvest their ripe-rice. That means the solidarity group will work in the field together to harvest the rice from one field to another until they finish working on all the fields that belong to them. All harvested rice will be tied in bunches and dried under the sun before hitting them with a piece of wooden board to separate the seeds from its trunk.
Yet, some farmers still keep using wooden mortar in removing the bark of rice seeds as it is their tradition. However, this kind of rice is tastier than the rice processed by machine and it would be very healthy for eating because there is less chemical. Unfortunately, rice farming in Cambodia yields only 2.5 to 3.5 tons per hectare on average. This low quantity caused by poor technology and chemical fertilizer in rice production; then the capacity of exporting rice is very low compared to other neighboring countries.
Cambodian traditional rice production has been used until today in some areas of the country especially in the remote areas where infrastructures and public service are inaccessible. Also, those farmers are trying to adopt the modern technique of rice production, but they lack capital to buy machineries using instead a human labor force. However, it is estimated that Cambodia will be able to export 1 million ton of milled rice to important markets such as the United State and Europe by the year 2015. This optimistic theory will tend to change the traditional rice production in Cambodia, and will bring Cambodian farmers an opportunity to reduce the poverty gap between the rich in urban areas and farmers.
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