Cambodia is an agricultural country where about 85% of its population is farmers. They produce rice paddy and they have staples in their stocks. Base on this, it means that Cambodian farmers would not face problems with shortage of rice. However, more or less, they meet problems with high price of food commodities, including rice. Reports from Cambodia’s provinces about complaints of high price of food through newspapers and radio show that the increase in price, or a so-called inflation, really affects the living condition of people, especially those who have small income.

Though this becomes reality in Cambodia’s society today, Cambodia still would like to contribute to help those in the world who lack rice. Broken rice has been exported to Senagal and recently the government announced that it is exporting six hundred tons of rice.

That is an opportunity for Cambodia to market its rice product to the world while United Nations agencies and World Bank called on countries not to restrict exports of food as this may make higher price of food and problems worse. Cambodia claims that even this is a small amount of rice, but this is an opportunity which Cambodia could help contribute to the world shortage of food.

What is important to note is that Cambodia is very optimistic and ambitious regarding rice issue. In recent days, Prime Minister of Cambodia, Samdech Akka Mahasena Padei Decho Hun Sen, confirmed during his closing remarks at the Government and Private sector meeting conducted twice a year since 1999, Cambodia will be able to export rice about 8 million tons by year 2015. Moreover, Cambodia is also interested to join in Organization of Rice Exporting Countries (possibly Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar), which is now under discussion of formation possibility while other ASEAN countries were not happy with.

Price rice is high in the world and most of Asia countries are facing difficulties in lowering the price. The price rise brings concerns of food security and unexpected social unrest such as demonstration, riot, etc. Indonesia’s government has taken measures to curb the export of rice made by private traders and allow only government agency to do this rice exportation.