No breakfast, no more school for poor students

smh.com.au
Thomas Fuller in Pray Viev, Cambodia
May 3, 2008

THE Sun Sun primary school, two low-slung buildings and a wooden shack, is surrounded by hectares of rice paddies that recently yielded what farmers said was the best harvest in memory.

But that has not shielded schoolchildren in the village of Pray Viev from the effects of the global food crisis.

A countdown has begun in Pray Viev and at 1343 other schools across Cambodia: in 30 days or less the schools' rice stocks will run out and a popular free breakfast program will be suspended indefinitely because of soaring food prices.

Short of cash, the United Nations World Food Program can no longer supply 450,000 Cambodian children with a daily breakfast of domestically grown rice supplemented by yellow split peas from the US and tuna from Thailand.

In a country where a recurrent paucity of food has taught Cambodians to survive on a bare minimum of nutrition, children in Pray Viev are unlikely to starve. But some may miss out on an education.

"Most of the students come to school for the breakfast," said Taoch Champa, a 31-year-old teacher.

The suspension of the breakfast program illustrates one way the global food crisis is hurting the world's poorest and most vulnerable people. Only destitute schools were selected to take part in the program. Breakfast has been a magnet for students, and the teachers' best friend.

Yim Soeurn, the principal at Sun Sun, said he knew what would happen when the free food disappeared: "Poor students will not come to school."

The imminent depletion of rice supplies is paradoxical for children who walk or ride their bicycles to school through kilometres of neatly delineated rice paddies. Rice is plentiful in Cambodia but is becoming less and less affordable for the people who grow it. In Cambodia, the price of rice is now more than $US700 ($750) a tonne, more than double the $295 a tonne that the World Food Program budgeted for this year.

The New York Times