Organic Vegetables, Fruits and Meats, High Demand But Hard to Find

By Sou Sophorn Nara

Khun Chanpha has struggled to find organic or chemical free vegetables, fruits and meats in Phnom Penh for years.

Chanpha works with a Non Governmental Organization to promote health care in Cambodia. She worried that the vegetables and fruits from the market may contain chemicals and pesticides that would affect her children’s health.

“When I feed my children with vegetables and fruits that I bought from conventional market, I feel like I am putting chemical into their mouth…I am so sorry but I need to give them enough vitamins,” said Chanpha. “Let’s feed my children with half vitamins and half chemical.”

It’s not easy to find organic products and when she does, she asks, “how can we believe they are chemical free?”

Chanpha sometimes shops at an NGO run store in Phnom Penh that sells chemical free vegetables and meats.

“There are limited amount of organic food choices in the shop. We can find some vegetables such as salads, green pepper, lemon, mints, some fish and pork but we can’t find spinaches, carrot, radish, cabbage, kale, broccoli and other Cambodian local green leaves,” she said.

In Phnom Penh there are at least three NGOs and three private companies running organic food shops including CEDAC, Khmer Harvest, PUAC, Happy Farms, Natural Garden and Aisa Bio. CEDAC has nine branches while Happy Farm has four in different locations in the city. The shop managers of CEDAC, Happy Farms and Natural Garden share the same problem: getting enough organic goods to sell in their shops.

Though they have their own vegetables farms, they depend on local farmers to supply organic and chemical free vegetables and fruits, chicken, duck, and pig.

Cambodia is late in building a domestic organic sector. It has limited capacity to advise interested farmers and entrepreneurs about the practice of organic and chemical free agriculture, according to 2011 report of Cambodian Organic Agriculture Association (COrAA).

The report says a considerable number of farmers in Cambodia cultivate crops such as cashew and especially rice, with little synthetic fertilizers and almost no pesticides, but they do not farm organically. For conventional vegetables, farmers use pesticides too often indiscriminately.  The report noted that the main problem in Cambodian agriculture is that farmers are using more fertilizers and pesticides to increase yields in the short term, but that may harm health and the environment.

CEDAC, a French acronym standing for Cambodian Center for Study and Development of Agriculture, works to improve the living conditions of small scale farmers and other rural poor. It works with them to increase food production and income while ensuring environmental sustainability and maintaining strong social cooperation.

Since 2004 CEDAC has introduced agricultural technologies for the cultivation of crops to 100,000 families for rice and 100 families for vegetables, 10,000 families for chicken raising and 200 families for pig raising. So far 10,000 families have fully become organic rice crop producers.

According to CorAA, organic agriculture is much more than farming without chemicals and pesticides. Organic agriculture involves soil preparation, pest management and other agricultural technologies that protect the environmental degradation.

Organic shop owners in Phnom Penh call their vegetables and fruits “natural or chemical free products” because the fruits and vegetables harvested from their farms do not meet organic standard defined by COrAA.

“We use the term natural products because according to COrAA organic products mean those crops that grow on three year long lasting free chemical soil,” said Kuy Kuchnalin, Managing Director of Happy Farm Shop.

“We use the term natural products because according to COrAA organic products mean those crops that grow on three year long lasting free chemical soil,” said Kuy Kuchnalin, Managing Director of Happy Farm Shop.

Kuchnalin whose shop sells chemical free vegetables, fruits and meats and other conventional products said a big obstacle to get good crop yields in her farm is that insects and pests often destroys crop before harvesting.  “Our soil has a lot of worms when we don’t use pesticides so our vegetables are often destroyed and we don’t get enough,” she said.

Because her farm does not yield enough, Kuchnalin orders products such as fruits, vegetables, chicken and pig from local farmers who she says get technical support from NGOs on how to plan crops without using chemicals and pesticides.

From the consumer perspective, the most important feature is the healthiness of the food. Besides the purity of the product, consumers like Chanpha increasingly want to be sure that the product was produced without agrochemicals and not exposed to high levels of pollution, according to COrAA.

The report says as consumers commonly do not meet the producers, it is difficult to trust products sold with the claim organically or chemical free.

“Some shops sell both conventional and organic vegetables…how can I see the differences…as they don’t have any proof,” said Chanpha.

According to COrAA, About 70 percent of Cambodia’s population depends on rice cultivation which covers about 75 percent of the arable land. In 2010, about 1,000 tons of milled organic rice was sold, most of it through CEDAC’s shops. Nevertheless, this quantity comprises only a very small share of the rice market in Phnom Penh, approximately 0.5 percent.

The report noted that for the vegetable sector the situation is more difficult as many still use some external inputs such as seeds and ‘organic fertilizers which are not permitted by COrAA’s Organic Standards

Mr. Chhim Phallyboth, Program Coordinator of COrAA said some crops such as vegetables can be considered chemical-free but not organic. The problem is that farmers use organic fertilizers produced from farm residues such as compost or from municipal waste which might contain pollutants such as heavy metals.

He said some farmer use imported pesticides that have no trademark and sources. They use the pesticides without knowledge so it may be harmful first for the users, second for the consumers and third for animals that live in the fields.

According to an official from the Cambodian Ministry of Agriculture who asked not to be named, Cambodia imports vegetables, fruits, meat, fish, seafood and other food commodity from neighboring countries to subsidize local products. He said it is hard to estimate how much food products are imported each day as record from custom officers are not reliable and some products are smuggled through illegal border passages.

The vegetable sector in Cambodia is dominated by imports from Vietnam and Thailand which together supply 40 to 50 percent of the vegetables consumption in the country. In 2010, Cambodia imported 70-80 tons of vegetables per day from Vietnam, according to COrAA.

“When supply does not meet demand people need to import from other countries whether the products are chemical free or not…they have no choice,” said Phallyboth.

The official said  most of Cambodian consumers in Phnom value local products such as fruits, vegetables, chicken, pork, beef, and fish etc. that are produced in the rural areas. He said farmers who plants crops around their house or in family plantation do not use chemical fertilize or if they do they use very little. The crops includes cooking leaves from wild , water spinach, cabbage, small round eggplants, small green pepper, small chili, tamarind, tomato, pumpkin, sweet potato, papaya etc. River and paddy field fish, family and naturally raised chicken and pig are also chemical free, he said.   He said so far Cambodia has 300 hectares of organic vegetable farm.

But while the produce comes from the countryside, Kim Makarady, Health and Education Director of the agriculture NGO CEDAC said there’s no way to know if the products are organically grown and chemical free as some farmers use chemicals and pesticides.

“We cannot confirm that the products from family farmers are chemical free unless they pass through our experimental process and get our certification,” he said.

Tests conducted by COrAA on 245 leafy vegetables and long bean samples from markets in Phnom Penh in 2010 revealed that between 15 percent of long bean and 95 percent of white stemmed kale contain of pesticides called organophosphate and carbamate  which are found in hazardous rank insecticides in Cambodia,

The shop manager of a CEDAC store in Phnom Penh, Nou Socheat said despite farmer’s cooperation in producing organic crops she still doesn’t have enough products to meet the growing demand of her customers. Presently CEDAC shop sells rice, fruits such as banana, papaya, mango and some vegetables such as eggplants, pumpkin, green salads and mint vegetables and other processed food products such as dried fruits, packed meats, pickled, honey and other conventional drinks such as alcohol and non alcohol etc.

She said some farmers are no longer producing chemical free products and have returned to growing conventional products. “By doing conventional products, it is easier for them because they do not need to take much care of their crops as they had to do for organic crops,” Socheat said.

Makrady said another difficulty is that organic crops require farmers to do more work. To get organic certification famers have to monitor and control the development of the crop, keep records of how they use manure and how they manage pests and report their process to CEDAC..

“Some farmer do not read and write so it makes them difficult to documents how they do with their crop, “he said

While the shelves at some organic and chemical free stores are sparse, the demand for organic vegetables, fruits and meats is growing among individuals, restaurants and hotel owners.

Natural Garden organic shop owner Neak Tharen has been supplying restaurants, hotels and other supermarkets with chemical free and organic vegetables since 2004. His 30 hectares of farm is not big enough to meet the demands and he now has to import some vegetables such as radish, potatoes and other roots from Vietnam.

Tharen has plans to become the leading organic supplier and exporter in Cambodia by investing in another 250 hectare of land for vegetables plantation.

“It is not easy to be organic products seller. We need to try our best to find chemical free products to sell in our shop…that’s why I need to have more land,” he said.

Makarady of CEDAC said growing organic vegetables and fruits would give people benefits: Firstly organic food will provide people good health as it does not contain chemical substance, secondly it provides better taste as it is rich in natural nutrition and thirdly it help protect our environment by keeping our soil and water out of chemical pollution.

“I see the same customers coming again and again. We gain more and more support from time to time. When they feel the taste and do not get sick after eating our vegetables, they come again,” said Socheat.

Chanpha rarely shops as she is busy working. Her housemaid often goes to Oreusy, one of the biggest markets in Phnom Penh, which sells all kinds of conventional products, both local and imported, including vegetables, meats, processed food, household materials and other groceries. Once in a while

Chanpha goes to buy fruits in a big fruits store on Monivong Street, which sells both local and products such as apples, pears, grapes, strawberries, peaches, cherries etc. But Chanpha only buys local products like rambutans, oranges, bananas, papaya and mangoes.