Pumpkins and PostHarvest Technology

Ms. Seth Nary is 64 and a widow. She lives in Psa Khleang Village, Kampong Khleang Commune, Soutr Nikom District, Siem Reap Province. Nary has 9 children, all unskilled and unemployed except for acting as farmers helpers during the rice season. Working with VSTP training Nary now grows pumpkins, a good cash crop that involves her family completely. She has passed on all her knowledge to the family and they have taken up the work.

The PTC Director has noted a real difficulty growing from Nary’s success. Last harvest, after 3.5 months in the fields, she collected around 30 tons of pumpkins. Even with her children working she needed extra workers to help her. As all the pumpkins ripen at about the same time in Siem Reap her prices fall from $.25 per kilo to less than $.05 per kilo by the last days. Her fixed costs for seed, labour and transport do not decrease but even with this the Seth family is able to earn enough to live. However 10 adults living on an average of less than $5 per day is extremely marginal. Because pumpkins are so difficult to transport, she must even pay the fuel costs to get them to market and these costs are going up dramatically. So reducing the weight and size of the produce through processing would really address this issue as well.

The problem is that she is unable to sell about a third of her crop. Pumpkins last for about 10 days after harvesting and unless they are sold or processed, they are thrown into the river. There is a 12 month market for pumpkin and its preserved and processed derivatives, but Nary has no idea what these processes are nor do the staff of the PTC. markets are local, provincial and even international, but nary cannot assess these markets and the Commune has no information either. She has been told that her use of home made fertilizer and avoidance of pesticides (much too expensive) may make her crop even more valuable in some markets.

With no access to post harvest skills or market knowledge, Nary seems to have reached a dead end. The PTC Director sees post harvest processing as being the most obvious answer to the problems that Nary and thousands of other Siem Reap farmers are having. Her PTC interacts with the Communes on almost a daily basis through the VSTP program and despite her best efforts she cannot locate a skilled training in PHT.