It’s a bright August morning in Cambodia’s Kandal province. The sun has hardly commenced its struggle up the sky’s path but the tropical heat is already hammering down the landscape of flat, wet paddy fields and irregular vegetable plots. Despite being located only a 45-minute-drive away from the traffic madness in the capital Phnom Penh, Prachum Angk village rests as a blissful oasis of peace and tranquillity, only here and there stirred by the cackling of stray chickens and the laughter of running kids.
Standing in the protective shade of his wooden house on stilts, 57-year-old farmer Men Sary is smiling broadly. He’s got good reason for it. His hard work of the past eight months has started to pay off. Men still recalls the district meeting he attended. His village was being selected as one of 15 pilot villages for an agricultural programme by some foreign organisation. If he joined as a volunteer, they told him, he’d receive free technical training on innovative farming techniques and new ideas on cultivating crops. Men joined the farmer group of VVOB’s ImAgE programme and by April he was planting rice under a new method called System of Rice Intensification or SRI.
“The other farmers all laughed when they saw my rice field,” Men remembers. “It looked very strange and I didn’t feel confident.” But when two months later the first results revealed themselves, Men was smiling and the other farmers turned curious. “They now admire me,” he says shyly, “I can grow stems as big as a hand or a foot.”
Encouraged by Men’s results, new farmers have joined the group. They are being taught the SRI technique on a demonstration plot by agricultural extension workers from the district. While his eyes travel over his muddy rice paddy, Men admits that his technique is not 100% SRI because he still uses chemical fertiliser. He doesn’t have a cow to produce the manure. But whereas before he would use it randomly whenever he taught it was needed, he now only applies it according to the book – more sparingly. “I call it semi-SRI,” he smiles, “I don’t have to spend so much money on fertiliser than before.”
Earlier the same year Men also started with growing mushrooms which, for him, was something completely new. It took him three months of preparations and by April the first mushrooms were ready. Unlike with the SRI technique, the farmer needed to invest some money upfront to start with his new crop. Some equipment such as oil drums and plastic materials were needed and money had to be spent on buying the spores. But Men is confident that, despite the modest profit he makes, his investment will already pay itself off come next year.
“The mushroom growing is difficult,” he says, “I have to follow a very strict structure.” His first results weren’t very encouraging. But the entrepreneurial farmer has meanwhile started to experiment with a different variety – oyster mushrooms – and his results are now steadily improving.
Before Men joined the ImAgE programme, his family income consisted of traditional rice growing and repairing bicycles. He found it difficult then to makes ends meet, he recalls. “Since I changed the technique of planting the rice, I’m spending less money on seeds but get more benefit because of a better result,” he explains. With his former technique, Men would produce 9 X 35KG on a plot of 100 square metres. With the SRI technique his yield has increased to 10 X 45KG on the same plot. “Now I can accurately calculate how many stems I need: 25 for one square metre, so 25,000 for one hectare.” Men smiles broadly, uncovering a fine set of white teeth. “It’s good for me,” he adds.
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| The Beauty – a traditional rice paddy... | ...and the Beast – Men’s semi‐SRI paddy...
...but the Beast is having the last laugh: Men’s yield increased by 43%. |
