Irrigation: a priority for the next government.

Cambodge Soir
08-08-2008

The Prime Minister expects the exports of Cambodian rice to exceed the ones in Vietnam.

“In the future, our land will become our white gold. In the past it was rubber, now it is rice”, declared Hun Sen during a trip to Kampong Speu.

On Wednesday 6th of August, journalists and farmers met a farmer-style Hun Sen who talked about agriculture while standing in a rice field. The Prime Minister who welcomed his Kuwaiti counterpart very recently has declared that, after Qatar, his own country had shown interest for Cambodian farmland. “On the 20th of August, a delegation of Kuwaiti representatives has planned to come back in order to talk about an agricultural investment project”, did he say before explaining that he plans to visit Kuwait City early next year.

Hun Sen also gave his point of view concerning the relationship with these nations from the Arab-Persian Golf: “These countries have oil, but no rice. They have to invest in our country, to grow food in our country, which helps the development of our agriculture.”

Bringing up a conversation he had with his guest, who emphasised the fact that Cambodia wasn’t properly using its production potential, Hun Sen said that his answer was: “If we were able to solve the irrigation problem, we could harvest two or three times per year and increase our production to three or four tons per hectare. This is how our export capacity could exceed the one in Vietnam.” At the moment, the Cambodian farmers have to limit themselves to just one harvest per year, with a production of 2.5 tons per hectare.

In front of his audience, Hun Sen stated that: “the development of the irrigation projects and the improvement of the rice field production”, would become one of the priorities of the next government.

Finally, taking the stance of an ecologist, he added that improving the production would allow “to avoid the surface increase of the rice fields”, which happens mostly to the detriment of the forests.