The Dogs That Bark at Elephants ....

Its not so much politics in Cambodia but rather power. Corruption is systemic and blatant ... so blatant there’s almost an honesty to it.  Some said that at least it was obvious rather than in the western world where its duplicitous and subtle. Another theory I got was if there were a change of government there would be even more because those in power now are already very wealthy.  Anyone new would have to build up wealth through yet more corruption.  

There is a stability provided by the current administration, but sights like the many brand new Range Rovers driving through Phnom Penh, suggest there are hundreds wealthy as well as millions poor.  This wealth is almost certainly not gleaned from moral business practice, built on compassion for their fellow man.  A bloke down the pub (always the best sources) told me half the aid coming into the country is “lost” but could probably be found again in the shape of the flash cars driving around its capital city. These drivers scare me.  They feel untouchable.  One person explained that there is a saying that the people are dogs and the ruling class, elephants.  Dogs might be able to bark at elephants but little else.  Elephants are untouchable, undefeatable, unstoppable. Thoughts of political improvement for its population are burdened by a hopelessness that seems so absolute and so conspicuous.

You consider temporarily that maybe its not so bad ... in the west we seem so self righteous that our way is the best way ... maybe democracy is over-rated ... maybe there is freedom in an absence of regulation.  Then you realise that there is no protection of people.  There are few rights.  The Economic Land Concessions in Cambodia that recently hit the headlines where 1 million hectares of land has been taken over by corporate firms is an example.  Many who “own” land, don’t.  The legal rights for land ownership are blurred in most instances.  It seems the small farmer in these cases get money for their farms but it is a surreal compulsory purchase - money or AK-47 - that’s the choice.

Economic Land Concessions represent the sound of ideologies clashing.  Cambodia can’t move on agriculturally without efficiencies in scale and technical expertise .... corporate farming is a quick fix ... the capitalist answer.  But individual people should have rights to what they have ... they should be respected and cherished not bullied and stolen from ... profit of the few can’t in anyway excuse the immediate suffering of the many.  There is a sadness and an intense injustice to it all. 

In a land where over 70% of the population have an income of $2 a day or less whilst the ruling class drive around in £75,000 lumps of metal, concealed by blacked out windows ... you start thinking there must be a better alternative species to belong to than human beings. 

Love You Long Time ...

Bay of Bengal (get to India, turn right and its the first sea on the left (... and right)), 35,000 feet up.  Its Friday.

We left Cambodia yesterday (travelling by bus through Thailand to Bangkok).  As usual I am confused. I loved the country and its people.  If I stop and think, I wonder whether it touched me more than I normally allow myself to be touched by land and strangers (that sounds a bit wrong, doesn’t it?)

I talked to a good number of locals about their past and their future; about their issues and their views.  Its easy for a daft Scotsman with spectacles to make skewed judgements based on minimal research ... but I always try and take the easy option. 

The agriculture is so labour intensive, its scary.  Most will work from dusk till dawn in a body position that homosapiens are really only designed to be in for short periods.  Time and effort are cheap here. There is so little money in it, success isn’t judged on profit or loss but malnutrition or health. The marvels of mechanisation ... of innovation ... of the power of the mind rather than simply the hands ... fall into a wondrous clarity in Cambodia. The examples are less complex, less forgotten and thus more compelling than in the UK.

You realise that breakthroughs in production methods are led by individuals for private gain ... yet whole communities and countries and continents benefit.  Innovation grows from need ... desperation even.  Innovation comes mostly from those with a contrasting rather than corresponding story to the traditional farming system. Innovation is a dish best served by the disadvantaged.  

We travelled through Thailand yesterday in 30 degrees of heat and you sensed a coldness compared to Cambodia.  There were far less smiles, a scarcity of laughter that I had become used to from the Khmer people.  You realise how vital smiles and jokes are in communication when normal communication is difficult.  I felt safe in Cambodia.  Phnom Penh wasn’t intimidating and I’ve felt a lot more threatened in Edinburgh.  British people seem angry compared to Cambodians, yet in comparison we don’t have much to be angry about. 

Despite being effectively a dictatorship ... it feels more free ... there is a refreshing lack of regulation and restriction.  Driving for example consists of buying a car, getting a family member to show you how to drive for a couple of hours, then off you go. You can get a licence but this seems optional. You drive on the right though this is definitely optional.  The spatial awareness of how your bumper might interact with another moving object feels like it comes from a special gene in Khmers that has been highly developed under the strict principles of Darwinism.  Back home (and even whilst away) I have just been through a prime example (SRDP grant applications) of how well meaning rules can become ever decreasing circles of restriction as they multiply and dig a deeper and deeper hole until you strike pettiness and stupidity (not that I’m sore about it, you understand).

Back in the UK we feel empowered ... in Cambodia they feel powerless.  Our public’s opinion carries weight in the minds of our political leaders ... in Cambodia those in power treat their people lightly.  Yet we are bound by regulation, rules and tied tight by bureaucracy.  In Cambodia a public with no voice and no money still have a strange freedom about them.

Goodbye Cambodia, even though we might never meet again ... I will always be your friend.

Extreme First Generation Farming, Dude ...

Koh Kong, Cambodia, 10 miles from Thai border.  Wednesday.

We meet a Khmer man called Paddy ... not certain this is his real name! He runs a bar, has a tuk tuk, smiles alot and is a cool dude.  He takes us to the river.  We meet Noy.  Noy is one more notch up on the cool dude numeric scale compared to Paddy ... which is saying something.

Noy speaks excellent English.  He takes us to a tiny village 30 minutes up river.  Each family has their farm of between 1 to 5 hectares. They grow melons, lemongrass, sugarcane, sandalwood and funny looking fruit that I don’t recognise.

The people live on very little here but the entrepreneurs amongst them harvest and sell their excess produce in Koh Kong market.  

There is one in particular who - having been prosecuted for growing marijuana elsewhere (!!) - moved into the village to start again.  He tried doing different things (crops, irrigation methods, fertiliser etc.). Some things were successful.  The other villagers started copying him.  Here was the innovator and driver of wealth creation not just for himself but indirectly a whole community .... I reflect that this might be the closest person to a new entrant I’ll come across in Cambodia.

We stop at a rickety bamboo bridge and we direct another question to Noy ... He answers ... These moments are special and sweet ... We realise he is a first generation farmer ... More questions follow and we realise he is an innovator ... We realise he has an education, an immense knowledge and a mind with its gates wide open. He told us that when he decided to farm, he came to a village ... asked about land ... and was pointed in a direction and told “help yourself”. I am so excited I consider wetting myself.

The Dude, Rona and me ... just before I wet myself

As we continue I also realise this is probably the most extreme first generation farmer I have met. You see, Noy was born in a refugee camp over the Thai border and stayed there until he was 12.  His English is excellent because the UN taught him the language in the camp. He doesn’t know what day he was born as everyone was disorientated as they fled from Cambodia. He never has a birthday.

The camp was hell. Thai soldiers guarded its perimeter with guns and unsmiling stares. No one was allowed to leave. Largely, made up of women and children, if a female strayed too far from the main group they were likely to be raped by the guards.  Food was something that was always given .... never found, harvested, purchased or sold.

I asked him why he wanted to farm ... his quick and definite response was a single word that came from a deep, deep place .... “Freedom”. 

How's Your Rice? ....

Kampong Chhnang, Two hours north of Phnom Penh.  Sunday.

We have started to get a little more insight into what issues are affecting the lives of modern day Cambodians. Malcolm - Tony’s cousin who’s lived here for 6 years - has been brilliant.  We have been so lucky to have his knowledge of the country.

We are staying in a farm-stay here. At one point I thought I was going to have to share a bed with Tony ... Tony thought he was going to share a bed with me ... we were both nervous.  In the end Tony blinked first and I was able to act as a lone MacDonalds Drive Thru for most of the mosquitos in the area.

We walked for about three hours through the paddy fields and the lotus.  We met farmers.  They spoke a different language and have a subsistence existence but they still reminded me of speaking to farmers in the UK.  Mostly laid back, liked a joke and a news.  The normal greeting is an almost singing, saying “How’s your rice?”.  Which reminded me of a  Scottish saying - “Foo’s yer Coos?”

The fields were mostly only appropriate for dry season rice.  The Meekon (which is miles away) overflows in the wet season (June to September ... its getting shorter) and the paddys we were walking sometimes were flooded with 5 metres of water.  Margins for a hectare (the average size of farm we were seeing) are poor and after a family is fed there isn’t a lot of cash coming in.  Loans are usually taken and when all crop is sold and the debt paid ... they are back at square one. Its the one slender thing, amidst the poverty and extremely basic living, I felt I had in common with them!

Dry season rice needs water pumped into the paddy fields; wet season crop relies on the natural rains ... the “working with nature” option is more profitable.  The farming craze in the area is Lotus.  Its leaves and petals can be eaten, its seed head used for decoration ... but my ignorance reckons this is a niche crop with limited life expectancy ... its definitely not rice.  They have to pump water into these fields 24 hours a day but expect a slightly better end price.

In the evening we had a 64 old lady farmer come and speak to us. She radiated an unstated wisdom but looked 94. She’d spent most of her waking life bent over in a paddy field.  It was a special hour listening to her.

Farming in Cambodia is hard beyond what I can fully appreciate.  The lack of mechanisation makes you realise how our own hands are not enough to progress.  The ingenuity, innovation and thought of those special people in the UK’s farming past ... the inventors, the early adopters, the thinkers ... the forces that have got us to where our industry is today ... should be worshiped on a daily basis. 

Hell Frozen Over ...

Tuol Sleng Prison ... codename: S-21 ... Phnom Penh. It’s Saturday morning.

Tuol Sleng was a tranquil school, a hub of education, that was converted to become hell on earth in 1975. The Pol Pot regime tortured and killed all those they took there (approximately 20,000). Only seven people got out alive.

I don’t think I’ve been to a more powerful place. We see photographs of the room we are standing in ... everything is the same except for the dead body in the photograph ... throat slit, fingers cut off. The photographs were taken by the Vietnamese immediately after storming the building in 1979. Other faces stare at me from the black and white ... faces that had to suffer like no one should, before they met their end.

The lady that shows us round explains how she lost her father, a brother and a sister to Pol Pot. How Phnom Penh was evacuated in 1975 and she, as a six year old, walked for two weeks to find safety. She explains that the torturers were largely children. They were brutalised and brainwashed in jungle camps before being sent to do evil upon their fellow people.

We walk the busy streets of a city once deserted ... and people smile ... we travel by tuk tuk ... and people wave. I realise all these people will have fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, cousins or grandparents that died during the regime and the famine afterwards. 2 million died, 1 million fled the country ... out of a 7 million population. That’s the equivalent of 17 million dying in the UK today; and over 8 Million fleeing as refugees. But the smiles and waves have so much more meaning ... displaced people can still find a place for gentleness ... horror and sadness can be overcome ... me moaning about the lack of rungs on the farming ladder feels incredibly pathetic.

Too Cool for School ...

24 hours. 5 minutes sleep. 6,000 miles. We are in Phnom Penh. Straight off the plane. A tuk tuk ride - sything through the heat, smells and madness of an alien culture - to the Royal Agricultural University to meet the Rector ... the main man.

With excellent English and endless patience for daft questions he draws the skeleton of Cambodian agriculture so we might be able to add bits of flesh at a later date.

He spoke of the future mostly. The one time he dwelt on the past he became emotional. By 2015 Cambodia wants to be the third largest exporter of rice in the world. The target is 1 million tonnes exported. In 2011 they officially export nothing.  Already though, in the last 10 years, they have increased their average yield from 0.9 tonnes per hectare to 2.7 tonnes.  New varieties, irrigation, double cropping have all helped.

Before Pol Pot - in 1974 - 85% of the population were farmers.  Now it stands at 74%. 2 Hectares of Rice paddy makes a decent living especially if it can be double cropped. Yet most have around 1 hectare, many can’t double crop.  

Corporate agriculture is now gaining momentum. As there is no legally effective deeds of ownership, companies have started farming smaller farmers’ land.

The land price has increased from $1,000 per hectare in the recent past to $15,000.

But the one question I wanted a different answer than I got was in relation to New Entrants.  The brutal facts are 1. No one aspires to farm (too hard and looked down on) and 2. Most of the population have a direct family link to a farm anyway.  As my study is on aspirational new entrants from non-farming backgrounds, I briefly consider my stupidity for not thinking the trip through ... I should really go back to the airport ... but then cold beer amidst the craziness of Phnom Penh with two fine Welsh gentlemen was too hard to resist.   

No Sleep Till Phnom Penh ....

Notice: Navel gazing has been temporarily suspended on this blog. Disruption is likely to last until the 14th of February.  We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused. The author would like to assure readers (if there are any) that every effort will be made to continue the same low standard of waffle despite the adjustment in subject matter.  Thank you for your patience during this time.

Today we fly to Phnom Penh ... a city I know so little about I don’t even know how to pronounce it.  Capital of Cambodia, some obscure travel blogs have suggested that its only been recently that murder and rape have become social taboos there.  I suspect this information is unreliable in the extreme ... but just in case ... I’ve taken some body armour and a male chastity belt.

I have told a few farmers where I’m going and the looks in response have varied between incredulous to social black balling.  “What are you going to learn there?”, they say adding at least one more adjective than quoted to add emphasis.

As I’m effectively in middle age (... something I’m struggling in my brain to accept ...) I can vaguely remember the pictures on TV of the horrific famine there ... I can recall a film called “The Killing Fields” achieving Oscar recognition ... and - based on limited information - Pol Pot still makes it onto my ‘Top 5 Bad Blokes that used to run countries’ list.

Cambodia has a significant part of its history written in blood with a pen of misery.  That history centres on agriculture. Our history centred on agriculture once too ... but that was four centuries ago, not three decades. Pol Pot’s version of Agrarian Communism put the farmers as the saviours of the country and intellectuals as the curse [interesting you can’t be both].  It didn’t work. People starved to death.

We live in a country where often agriculture is perceived as tenuous, adjacent to the core wealth and prosperity of our nation. In Cambodia - where 70% of its population are farmers - agriculture is everything, crucial, central. Almost the inverse reflection of ours.

To recover from the horrors of the past requires an extreme resilience that our generation, in our country, in our industry have thankfully never had to look for.  I know I will learn things in Cambodia that I won’t learn anywhere else.