Once the largest single industry in the Kingdom, Cambodia's agricultural sector has shrunk significantly with the growth of industrialisation. Now, with few other options as the economy stalls due to the pandemic, Cambodians are once again going to ground.
Despite decades now of rapid industrialisation, Cambodia is still largely a rural, agrarian nation of hamlets and dirt roads, rice paddies and lotus fields.
About 40% of Cambodians are engaged in agriculture as their main occupation, and Phat Sokha is one of them. The farmer is a commercial grower, a smallholder in Kandal province who makes his living from the land south of Phnom Penh.
Historically, this broad category has been the dominant sector in Cambodia’s economy and, at least in terms of employment, continues to hold sway over some 40% of the national labour force. But as the country has industrialised, the agricultural sector has dwindled in its contributions to the cash economy.
Household agriculture, traditionally the main driver of poverty reduction in Cambodia, was edged out of that role by wage labour in about 2013.
This activity has ranged from home-made frog ponds to plans to join relatives in the countryside to help raise vegetables and other animals.
When Sean Sreymom lost her job at a local non-governmental organisation, she and her family looked to the land while cutting costs at home.
«This is my Covid garden,» Sreymom said with a smile, showing off the cultivated strip between the side-by-side houses owned by members of her family.
This article was written by Andrew Hafner
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