The primary objective of Kais Village Community Sustainable Farm project is, and has been to supply our kitchen and facilitate a healthy diet for our children. We also need to produce a surplus that can be sold to meet farm costs and contribute to the cost of running Kais Village Community. Essentially an economic project. However, the project vision is for so much more:

Work on the farm began in 2003 with the planting of a mango orchard. In 2007, with help from a UK charity, The Cambodian Rural Development Team (link) was engaged on a 12 month contract to assist in setting up the basics of a working farm.

The farm offers an opportunity for teaching animal husbandry, agricultural and horticultural skills to the children as trade skills for later life. In future we plan for it to become a demonstration farm for permaculture and innovative agricultural practices and at the same time become a valuable local resource for low income farmers in Kompong Speu province.  

The farm comprises a kitchen garden, vegetable plots and a fruit orchard. Central to the farm is a large fish pond, used for irrigation and for the natural rearing of tilapia and catfish. Free-range egg-laying chickens and ducks provide a valuable protein source, as well as livestock to be sold at the market.

Over the years, with professional advice and skilled volunteers, we have introduced some genuinely innovative developments:

• Only natural composts, insecticides and fertilizers are used, all of which are concocted onsite.
• Pigs & cows produce fuel for the biodigestor and the resulting biogas is used in the kitchens for cooking.
• We have implemented an energy saving natural filtration and aeration system in the fishpond.
• In an attempt to secure a supply of water for the children year-round, rainwater is collected during the rainy season, filtered, and stored in 4 especially built rainwater harvesters.

Agriculture is vital to the survival of most rural Cambodians. An estimated 85% of 14 million Cambodians live in rural areas and depend on agricultural cultivation as their primary means of subsistence or livelihood. They farm small plots, earn meagre incomes of less than 1/5 of their non-agricultural peers and are ill-equipped to invest in or improve their land*. (*UNDP 2007)

The vast majority of households in rural Kampong Speu Province likewise depend upon agriculture for their living. Treng Trayoeung is essentially a community of poor rural farming households.