Palm Fruits Generate Small Incomes for Cambodian Farmers
Palm tree is symbol of Cambodia’s heritage and was introduced for about one hundred years ago since the reign of Cambodia’s King Norodom of the 1900s. Due to his one family-one palm tree policy, at the present time, we see that there are many and many palm trees at almost everywhere of the country. Palm tree is useful for many types of purposes and this is according to preference of farmers. Some farmers use palm fruits for making sugar palm and sell to markets, the others just sell palm fruits to make some money. The behavior they do with the palm tree is according to their tradition which varies from areas to areas and from provinces to provinces. As example, farmers in Batheay district, Kampong Cham province, sell palm fruits along the national roads 6 to visitors who are interested in Khmer palm fruits which are rarely sold at modern markets or shopping centers.

Sellers, those who buy palm fruits from the palm trees from farmers, earn 1,000 Riels for their sales of 10 units of finished palm fruits. This means that farmers earn less than 1,000 Riels per 10 units of palm fruits. About three to four palm trees of farmers could make about 5,000 Riels and per year, according to a farmer seller, each farmer could earn about 100,000 Riels from the sale of palm fruits. However, this amount of money is according to numbers of fruits and trees they have.

Meaning in short, it is seen that palm fruits just generate very small income to farmers, if they sell palm fruits. Their income may be higher if they make sugar palm.



April 29th, 2008 at 11:36
Palm tree really provides benefit to Cambodian people in rural areas but it is a small profit coming from it. Some people stopped producing sugar palm because of high price of firewood and they have found difficult to find them. At the present time, most of palm tree have been cut down and exported to neighboring countries such as VN. By the way, the price of sugar palm is not increasing balancing to the production cost. Will sugar palm producers continue their career?