Food Crisis in Cambodia

Cambodia is an agrarian country in which about 80 percent of the population living in the rural area and almost all of them are farmers. Cambodia is one of top five rice exporting countries in the world after Thailand, Vietnam, and India. So why Cambodians could not have enough food to fulfil their stomatch? This is a timely and heated subject for open discussion among the Cambodian students at the Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU) which is going to take place in this saturday May 17 2008 in the common room second floor of B Building. Before that I would like to provide my personal comments on this.

1. Cambodian economic growth which is measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) could not benefit all Cambodians. The unequall share of the growth between the rich and the poor is a big concern.

2. Land administration is one of the top issues in current Cambodia. Booming land price has dragged bad people to illegally grasp the land of the innocent farmers and citizens of the country. Hectars of land have been fenced to become the property of the powerful and rich. This creates a huge lack of land for cultivation.

3. Irrigation system is far from the requirement/need of the farmers. They (the government, international donor agencies, and international financial institutions) dont pay enough attention on this. Without water how could we grow rice and other crops? How could we reduce rural poverty without investing in agriculture?

4. Middlemen are trouble makers. They buy and store the rice for profits particularly during this time of uncontrolable increasing food price.

5. The government has issued some policies to curb the increase in food prices but it seems just for a short term. The government could not control the price unless it has effective mechanism in controlling the price through increase the supply of rice.

6. The goverment has proposed OREC (Organization of rice exporting countries) inclusing countries in the Mekong region (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam). The main objective of the initiative is to control the supply and demand of rice in the region.

7. World food crisis is driven by the oil price and bio-fuel production. Oil price affects many aspects of the economy. It impacts developing countries more than developed ones. Gasoline price in Cambodia is higher than neigboring countries (even higher than Japan and US). This pushes the price of all other food stuffs in the country.