Everyday.com.kh
Translated from Khmer by Socheata
An official from the agriculture department of the city of Phnom Penh said that rice fields belonging to the people along the suburb of the city, amount only to 4,000 hectares at the end of 2007. Beyond that, all the former rice field lands were developed as industrial zones and housing development. Pheng Sokham, the director of the agriculture department of the city of Phnom Penh, told Rasmei Kampuchea on 05 March that, in 1999, the extend of the rice field lands amount to 11,000 hectares, and it shrunk to 7,300 hectares in 2001. Each year, the loss of rice field lands amount to about 1,000 hectares, and among the 4,000-hectare remaining, the majority of them have changed ownerships already. Pheng Sokham said that the rice field land in the suburb are very expensive, for example, in Sak Sampov, 1 hectare of rice field land cost more that $500,000. He said that people living in the suburbs used to have a hard life as farmers, but the majority of them are all rich now when they sell their lands. He said that this situation does not affect food shortage at all, because turning rice field lands into industrial zones and housing development is more beneficial than using them to plant rice.
