The Cambodian palm sugar farmers doing it greener and cleaner
October 25, 2018 | Cambodia
A social enterprise in Cambodia is employing new techniques to help farmers make palm sugar in a more environmentally friendly and safe way, as well as getting them more bang for their buck.

Cambodia is famous for producing palm sugar. Juice is collected from the flowers of palm sugar trees, which is then boiled to make palm sugar, often into tablets, where they are then used in traditional Khmer cooking. Creating palm sugar also provides a livelihood for many Cambodians. But the traditional method of creating palm sugar, which involves cooking it over a stove powered by a wood fire, comes with negative side effects. When done on a large scale, this method contributes to deforestation in a country facing the increasing loss of its forests.

Narein Sourn, who runs social enterprise Sovannak Palm Sugar, says he has the answer. According to him, the farmers who produce his palm sugar use a specially designed stove that could reduce the amount of wood burnt by up to 30%.

“I want to continue to help farmers by selling their product to the market and to continue to introduce the environmental-friendly way,” he says. The company’s website reports that each kilogram of its palm sugar uses two kilograms less firewood than the traditional way of production.

In addition to addressing environmental challenges of traditional palm sugar production, Sovannak Palm Sugar seeks to enrich farmers and standardise their products so that it can be exported abroad.

Sourn recounts the problems of unregulated production: “Until now, they produced palm sugar at their households, individually. We see that that way has a lot of high risk in hygiene control,” he says. “We focus on [the] quality of the sugar, because we care about the farmers, our consumers, everybody – I always say we need to grow together and be happy together.”

Sovannak Palm Sugar built a production centre, placing as many stoves there as farmers who agree to abide by certain production standards. Sourn says the facility includes not only the stoves, but also drying tools, cooking tools, an area to dry the sugar, hand washing materials and anything else needed for production. The farmers only have to bring their palm sugar juice and firewood.
http://sea-globe.com/sovannak-palm-sugar/

It looks like there is vast room for development in many areas; a shake-up for the cottage industries on many fronts. I read an interesting article in the paper on cricket farming a couple of months ago. A lot of ideas and new initiative floating around at the moment. I wonder what agriculture will look like in KOW in 10 years. I bet it'll be vastly different