The Sunrise Farm was designed and put in place when we were given the new land by the government in late 1999. The proposition is for the Sunrise farm to produce vegetables, milk, fruit, eggs, fish & meat to supply the Sunrise kitchen and to produce a surplus for markets to meet farm costs and contribute to the cost of running Sunrise Children’s Village. The farm offers an opportunity for teaching farm and horticulture skills to the children as trade skills for later life. It may serve as a resource for NGO and provincial agricultural advisory services to use as a demonstration area for innovative agricultural practices.

The farm was designed when we were given the new land by the government in late 1999. There are 10 hectares, five inside the village rampart and five constituting “the farm”. Inside the village complex are vegetable gardens, four fish-ponds, a mango and guava orchard where ducks and chickens scavenge. Our Fish, Chicken and Duck Farms are already established and attended to by our Farm Hands and a small Kitchen Herb Garden is a favourite with the Cooks!!

Unfortunately, the worst floods Cambodia has seen in 70 years flooded the project out in September 2000 and we have since built a levy round the farm area to prevent this from happening in the future. We hope it works, as we were rowing boats on the farm in 2000!

In January of 2001 we started clearing the external land (about 5 hectares) of UXO's, with the help of the Special Gurkha Services and cooperation from Australian government agencies and an ex-Australian army soldier, Carl Chirgwin, under the Destroy a Minefield (DAM) organization and with the support of the Burley-Griffin Rotary Club of Canberra.

With the help of donor sponsorships, we intend to develop our farm. We plan to move onto the five hectares behind the present protected village complex and develop a range of farm projects that will satisfy the appetites of the Sunrise children (for a start they eat 1/2 kilo of rice per day per child!) with healthy and palatable foods. We intend to introduce renewable energy resources wherever we can and to use organic production methods like composting, integrated pest management, crop rotations with pasture leys & integrated farming systems.

Agriculture is the senior sector in Australia’s aid program in Cambodia with a number of consulting firms and many NGO providing assistance in components of projects and in the case of the firms, in large, dedicated agricultural projects.

Sunrise is seeking assistance from different organizations to assist in the development of a small farming enterprise that will support the Sunrise children.

We have a marvellous start – GRM, an agricultural group managing the AusAID extension project in Cambodia, has chipped in with approx $45,000 for the construction and operating of a fruit tree plant propagation nursery. Shortly there will be a steady output of budded, grafted and marcotted fruit trees, expanding the orchard and supplying local NGO and retailers with premium quality clones. As time goes by we hope to have an extended list of benefactors who can point to Sunrise Farm projects as ‘their own’!

Australian Volunteers International has funded the first twelve months salary of a Farm Project Manager who will arrive in 2006 to start work in earnest. We are looking for donors interested in funding a second and even third year of this Farm Manager's salary - only A$25,000per annum!!!!!!

For more details of how we plan to set up the farm and the costs involved, please click here to download an Excel spreadsheet.