Photo: Michael Sullivan/NPR
Nathalie Chaboche inspects peppercorns on the vines at her pepper farm in Cambodia. During the dark Pol Pot years, it looked like many good things would never come back. This plant is one that did.
I’d love to be able to give you a hopeful story about Planet Earth post-coronavirus, but lacking that, here’s one small reason to remind ourselves that we can get through almost anything. It’s a story about a plant returning to Cambodia after what truly seemed like the end of the world — the brutal Pol Pot regime.
Michael Sullivan reports at National Public Radio (NPR), “Pepper is believed to originate from southern India. But some chefs, including the late Anthony Bourdain and the Michelin-starred French chef Olivier Roellinger, have been drawn to pepper produced in Cambodia, specifically in the province of Kampot. That’s where a near-ideal combination of sea, soil and climate produces a very aromatic, nuanced — and expensive — spice.
” ‘It has a unique taste,’ says Nathalie Chaboche, whose La Plantation began planting in southern Kampot seven years ago and is now one of the province’s biggest pepper producers, producing 25 tons last year, and employing 150 people full-time and another 150 as day laborers during the harvest season. …
” ‘It should not be too spicy, because if it’s too spicy, it just burns your mouth. Kampot pepper is not too spicy. It’s mild-spicy. … It’s like a wine,’ she explains. ‘You can taste it like a wine, and then you can keep the taste in your mouth for a very long time.’
“Cambodians have been growing the Kamchay and Lampong varieties of pepper — the kind known now as Kampot pepper — for centuries, but it didn’t really become a significant cash crop until French colonialists started sending it back home in bulk in the early 1900s. …
“Chaboche didn’t know any of this when she came to Cambodia eight years ago with her Belgian-born husband, Guy Porre, to start what she calls a ‘second life’ after both left lucrative technology careers in Europe and the United States.
“They came to this laid-back province on the Gulf of Thailand to look for a place to live quietly near the water. They decided on a whim to visit a pepper farm.
“They were immediately hooked. There was just one problem.
” ‘Yeah, we knew nothing about pepper,’ Porre admits. ‘We knew nothing about farming in general. We’ve always been in the software business.’
“They knew enough, however, to learn from the best — Cambodian farmers whose families have been growing pepper in the region for generations.
” ‘They came to me in 2013 needing pepper vines,’ says 36-year-old Hon Thon, whose farm is about 25 miles from La Plantation. ‘They needed 2,000 vines, so I cut them from my farm and from some of my neighbors’ farms and brought them here.’ …
“Now … Thon splits his time between working here and on his own farm. He says there’s good money in pepper — along with financial freedom not available to most day-wage earners. …
“The pepper industry almost died during the the genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s. … When the fighting ended and the Khmer Rouge were defeated, some farmers, including Thon’s relatives, returned to their lands and slowly nursed what vines remained back to health.
“It took time. Twenty years ago, only a few tons of pepper were grown annually. Last year, the 400-plus members of the Kampot Pepper Promotion Association produced roughly 100 tons. …
“[But] smaller farmers often feel squeezed as larger producers, such as La Plantation, have come to dominate the market, and middlemen under-pay small farmers for the pepper they produce.
“Chaboche says she understands the frustration. ‘I think it’s very difficult for the small farmers. … That’s why we want to buy their production at a fair price and find a market for them.’
“The couple [also] are aiding the pepper promotion association’s effort to get fair trade certification for Kampot pepper, which would help the association’s smaller members.”
More at NPR, here.
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