Palm Tree is a kind of plants that Cambodian people living in rural love planting them in the traditional age. At the present, people are cutting down the trees to sell them across the border or to process the trees at an industrial scale. That is problems making farmers to lose much more money by not keeping them to tap from. According to government directive, it encourages the public to carve handicrafts from palm wood and produce wine and sugar from the trees to meet market demand.

The Government regards Palm Tree, which is one of the country’s seven national symbols, as the Khmer Identity and the National Heritage, and encourages the people to plant, protect and preserve them. At the same time, the Council of Ministers issued a directive ordering the public to plant more palm trees on the empty land and especially at the border areas.

According to The Cambodia Daily’s report, Pok Leak Reasmey, Executive Director of the NGO Khmer Nature Enterprise, which produces beer, vinegar and sugar from palm trees, welcomed the directive. He added that, poor families are losing out by chopping down their trees and selling them to Vietnamese businessmen for only $5.

Hay Ly Ann, general manager of Confrel Co., Ltd, which exports palm wine to the European Union and South Korea, quoted by The Daily as saying the directive could help tap the true potential of Cambodia’s palms. He added that “I believe that palm trees will generate a large amount of money for poor farmers, and people don’t know yet how important palm trees are”.

According to 2004 survey of Agriculture Ministry, it indicated that Cambodia was home to 3.5 million palm trees. By the way, 30 percent of trees were cut down and sold across Cambodia’s borders between 2000 and 2006.

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