Srun Meo

Srun Meo
Status: Raised
$500.00 Loan Request
$500.00 Raised
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=26403

About the Entrepreneur Name: Srun Meo
Business Name: Srun Meo's Rice Farm
Location: Khsach Kandal district, Cambodia
Primary Activity: Farming
Loan Requested: $500.00
Repayment Term: 12 months - repaid monthly
Loan Use: To purchase a cow, rice seed, fertilizer, and weaving materials
Date Posted: Dec 5, 2007
Date Funded: Dec 5, 2007

Mr.Srun Meo (age 64) married his wife, Luch Yom (age 57), in 1971. They live in a small village across the Mekong River about fifteen kilometers north of Phnom Penh. They share their one-room, stilt house with three of their eight children. The youngest child, a boy, studies in grade seven in the village school.
Like most everyone in rural Cambodia, Srun lives from the skills he’s learned and applied over the course of his life. On a 2,700 square meter plot of land he farms rice. In a good year, of every three kilos he harvests, he keeps two to feed his family and sells one. Interestingly, they expressed concern about the rice harvests. Apparently, demand for snake meat has increased dramatically as Cambodia’s growing economy creates an upper class that will pay more for exotic foods. Cobra meat sells for $10 or more per kilo in Phnom Penh currently. With fewer snakes as the natural predators, the population of mice has increased and mice are a pest that eats rice on the stalk. Srun said many farmers in the area do not know what to do.

Srun also currently has two cows and would like to buy another. He says he can make US$ 150 profit if he can raise one to maturity without illness. His wife weaves cloth of silk, cotton and nylon thread. She learned when she was eighteen from her older sister but only started again three years ago so she could teach one of her daughters.

They hope this loan will allow them to increase the family’s cash flow. Their primary goal is to keep the remaining son who studies, in school. The furthest any other children advanced was grade eleven.