Cambodia’s Royal Oxen Forecast Poor Rice Crop

Agence France-Presse — Getty Images No rice, please. In Phnom Penh on Tuesday, Cambodia’s royal oxen ate corn and beans, but no rice, during an ancient ceremony said to predict the year’s harvest of various crops.

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By Robert Mackey

Add Cambodia’s royal oxen to the list of economic pessimists predicting hard times ahead. Reuters reported this week that Cambodia’s version of Groundhog Day went poorly this year, as the King’s oxen enjoyed offerings of corn, green beans and soy beans, but ignored a large plate of rice, “an omen the royal astrologer said boded ill for the harvest of the country’s biggest crop.” As the Chinese news agency Xinhua explained, the ancient ritual marks the traditional beginning of the rice-growing season in the region.

Cambodian farmers were reportedly “dismayed” at the forecast of a poor rice crop. Reuters noted that while the “annual ritual, in which oxen plow a field near the royal palace before being given offerings, is taken seriously by many of Cambodia’s superstitious, and largely poor, farmers if not by most of the politicians and diplomats who attend it.”

After the oxen passed on the rice course, the presiding astrologer, Kang Ken, emphasized the positive, telling the crowd of several thousand onlookers that “beans and corn will enjoy better yields this year.” According to The Phnom Penh Post, the astrologer later tried to spin the press corps, telling reporters that the rice crop would in fact be a good one and that there would be no drought.

Despite this, the Post reported, farmers who came to the capital for the ceremony were disheartened by the prediction. The Post also noted that Cambodia’s government is “encouraging people to plant as much rice as possible,” no matter what the oxen say. At the same time, Agence France-Presse reported that Prime Minister Hun Sen, who did not attend the ceremony, had also “rebuked royal astrologers for not predicting the deadly 2001 floods that claimed 59 lives.”

The ceremony also includes a symbolic plowing of some land near the Cambodian royal palace. This year, the oxen pulled a plow steered by the president of the country’s supreme court, Dith Munty, who performed the act flawlessly and was not required to do it again later.

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The president of Cambodia’s supreme court, Dith Munty, using a plow pulled by the country’s royal oxen during a ceremony in Phnom Penh on Tuesday.