Salt industry affected by heavy rains

Cambodia’s salt industry is suffering from a catastrophic harvest season that will see farmers in Kampot and Kep provinces unable to collect any grains this year due to a large amount of rain during the dry season, according Bun Narin, the technical chief of the Kep-Kampot Producers Community. Salt harvesting season runs from January to April, when salt water is brought from the nearby Gulf of Thailand to flood more than 5,000 hectares of fields, eventually evaporating and leaving behind sea salt. During a typical season, farmers would have harvested up to 100,000 tonnes of salt by mid-March, but rains had stopped them, Narin said. The industry brought in about $22mn in revenue last year according to data from the Ministry of Industry and Handicrafts, while the sector’s total haul plus its existing reserves was about 143,000 tonnes. But the annual domestic demand for salt is about 90,000 tonnes, which left the salt producers only 60,000 tonnes in reserves going into this year’s unproductive harvesting season. (Source: Phnom Penh Post)