The Life Of Farmers In Cambodia

Cambodia is a flat country with a tropical monsoon climate therefore most of the country consists of low lying alluvial plains which are good for agriculture. As a result, eighty percent of Cambodian people living in rural areas are farmers. However, the life of farmers in Cambodia is very simple and peaceful but they are busy and hard working and they have to confront natural disasters.

To start with, most Cambodia farmers don’t have a modern life like city residents do, but they live a simple and peaceful life. They don’t have luxury cars but they have ox-carts; they don’t work in offices but they work in the fields. They live very peacefully unlike city residents. They go to the farmlands in the morning to take care of their crops until late in the afternoon and then go back home and do some planting around their house such as vegetables, cane tree, fruit trees and other types of plants. Furthermore they raise chickens, ducks and pigs for their daily diet and sometimes they go fishing too. It seems that their lives very peaceful. They are not likely to have political involvement or any business rivals that business man usually have in the city.

Even though the life of farmers in Cambodia seems to be very simple and peaceful they have to work hard every day through out the year. In fact, most farmers in Cambodia do their farming in a traditional way. It means that that instead of using machines to work on the farms, cows or oxen are use to do the farm work. You can imagine how hard working they are. Starting from very early in the morning with their cows of oxen, they go to the fields working in the heat of the sun or rain all year round. There is no alternative; they have to do their work otherwise they can not survive. In order to make their lives better, they have to do some extra work around their house as well such as growing vegetables, raising chickens, ducks, and pigs or fishing for their daily diet. The work keeps the farmers busy all the time from one day to another.

By: Son Keathearith

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Reference :

- Norton University Newsletter, September 2010 / January 2011, Page: 78.