Siem Reap, KH – Family is using their tractor to raise their income – 30 March 2021

The DK family are proud of how their small tractor has increased their income by using it for ploughing their market garden, and transporting the garden’s inputs and the vegetables they produce. Rey our local shop owner is also feeling proud because the family is one of the earlier families to join his garden shop’s “path to food and income self-sufficiency” program. They built a home vegetable garden with Rey’s team shortly after the program started in 2013.

Since then, the family has been improving their life in small steps. They now have two sons KSC and KS. Their first son used to get sick often because of poor nutrition that weakened his immune system, but since starting the garden his health has gradually improved. During the recent Coronavirus lock-down, the two brothers have helped their mother and father with planting cucumber.

This assistance has been very important because they have a home garden, which they cultivate outside the dry season, and also a market garden that they earn income from all year round. Their interest in building the market garden was enabled by their knowledge of the home garden’s organic growing principles.

Like their fellow farmers they have faced the recent challenges of extreme seasonal weather and the COVID pandemic, which controls their lives because movements are restricted by the need to stay safe. They cannot go to other places like the market, and have limited contact with outside people. Consequently, vegetable prices have been low.

The family has a dream of one day earning enough to rent a Rent-to-Own home for their children when they are grown up so that they have a comfortable home for raising families of their own.