Children waiting in line for their breakfast at the Sun Sun primary school in Pray Viev, Cambodia. (Thomas Fuller/International Herald Tribune)
But now, the World Food Program no longer has the cash to supply 450,000 Cambodian children with a daily meal of domestically grown rice supplemented by yellow split peas from the United States and tuna from Thailand. (Thomas Fuller/International Herald Tribune)PRAY VIEV, Cambodia: The Sun Sun primary school, two low-slung ochre-yellow buildings and a wooden shack, is surrounded by many acres of rice paddies that recently yielded what farmers say is the best harvest in memory. But that has not shielded schoolchildren here from the effects of the global food crisis.
A countdown has begun among administrators at the school and at 1,343 other schools across Cambodia: in 30 days or less the schools' rice stocks will run out and a popular program of free breakfasts will be suspended indefinitely because of soaring food prices.
Short of cash, the World Food Program, the United Nations agency that feeds the world's poorest people, can no longer supply 450,000 Cambodian children with a daily meal of domestically grown rice supplemented by yellow split peas from the United States and tuna from Thailand.
In a country where a recurrent paucity of food has taught Cambodians to survive on a bare minimum of nutrition, children in this village are unlikely to starve. But some may miss out on an education.
"Most of the students come to school for the breakfast," said Taoch Champa, a 31-year-old teacher. "They also come to learn."
The suspension of the breakfast program illustrates one of the many ways that the global food crisis is hurting the world's poorest and most vulnerable people. Only destitute schools were selected to participate in the school feeding program: Pray Viev, in particular, is one of the poorest villages in what is Cambodia's most impoverished province, Kampong Spueu.
When the free breakfasts were introduced here eight years ago by the World Food Program, they were an instant hit.
"Students brought their brothers and sisters, 2, 3 and 4 years old," said Yim Soeurn, the principal at Sun Sun. "It was very hard to control."
The breakfasts have been a magnet for students ever since - as well as the teachers' best friend. Well-fed students are more attentive, tardiness is no longer a problem (breakfast is served at 6:30 a.m., before classes begin) and attendance by girls, who for years had been kept home by their parents, has increased sharply.
Outside his office, amid the high-pitched squeals of excited children pouring out of their classrooms for recess, Yim says he knows what will happen when the free food disappears: "Poor students will not come to school."
When the breakfast program was interrupted in January 2007 because of budget problems unrelated to high food prices, attendance fell by 10 percent, Yim said. Menh Veasal, a 14-year-old at the top of his class, skipped school to collect frogs and crabs from a nearby river - his contribution to meals with his parents and seven siblings. Sim Sreywat, a shy 12-year-old, was ordered by her mother to trek to nearby mountains where she harvested tamarind buds and bamboo shoots.
The imminent suspension of rice supplies is particularly paradoxical for the children who each day walk or ride their bicycles through miles of neatly delineated rice paddies on their way to school. Rice is plentiful in Cambodia, and the country has been a net exporter for the past decade. But it is becoming less and less affordable for the very people who grow it. In a 2006 survey, well before the spike in food prices, 22 percent of Cambodians in rural areas could not meet their own basic food needs.
The most productive agricultural land in Cambodia is near the borders with Thailand and Vietnam, and much of what is harvested in those places is exported at world-market prices.
But the soil in Kampong Spueu province is sandy and parched, yielding less than 1 ton per hectare, or 2.5 acres. That's half the national average, and local families typically have plots that are too small to feed their families. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge government in 1979, each family here was given one hectare of land, a parcel that diminishes in size as children divide their inheritances.
Thomas Keusters, the country director of the World Food Program in Cambodia, said he did not know when or whether the school feeding program would re-start.
"Not before the next school year - October 2008 - at best," he said.
Worldwide, the UN food agency has initiated an appeal for $500 million in additional funding to cover the increase in food prices. In Cambodia, the price of rice is now above $700 a ton, according to Phe Lamine, who is charged with food procurement in the Cambodian office of the World Food Program. This is more than double the $295 per ton that the agency budgeted for this year.
There was cash remaining for the school lunch program, but Keusters said he had diverted it to cover overruns in the most essential programs, including providing food for HIV and tuberculosis patients as well as pregnant and lactating mothers and infants.
The breakfast program seemed to be running smoothly in February when the World Food Program awarded contracts to five Cambodian millers for 5,780 tons of rice, all at less than $400 a ton. But when rice prices headed skyward in March, four millers defaulted on their contracts and the fifth delivered only a fraction of what was promised.
One miller, Von Bun Heng, sent an apologetic letter to Keusters, citing "force majeure" for the cancellation of the contract.
In a country where people get well over half their calories from rice, the higher prices are engendering tension.
A half-hour from the World Food Program offices, amid the crowded cacophony of the Cambodian capital, You Sareun, a shopkeeper, said his customers were angry.
"They say, 'If rice gets more expensive, people are going to die,' " You said. "They tell me in a joking way, but they are also serious."
