On 12th, September 2019 our group went to Saang district to learn and get to know more about chemical fertilizer. Before we arrive there, our goal for visiting there is to learn and compare the difference between chemical fertilizer and organic fertilizer also we want to know the thought from the farmer about using chemicals. My expectation for the trip is to see how vegetables grow in a chemical way.
Trip to Saang is one of the strange trips for us because our project to learn about the household garden which is planting using organic fertilizer, but for this trip, we also want to observe about the chemical. Learning from just a side we can’t make any thought out of it because we do not know from another side perspective. In the trip to Saang, I have learned so many things about the chemical that I could not talk about all of it. One of the things that I learned is that they only eat the vegetables that they grow in front of their house which is called household garden and it is organic, and the garden that they use chemical is a big farm where they grow many different plants and vegetables and they only sell it to the market in Phnom Penh. I can say that they are very smart and at the same time they only think about their own profits. They know that chemical is not good for the health and also they do not eat what they grow. They grow chemical just to sell to the market where all of our people go and buy there. Another piece that I have learned at Saang is that they prepare the land just like organic planting does. They mentioned that chemical fertilizer is just helping the plant to grow faster, bigger and also look fresh and there are many types of chemical fertilizer and I can tell one of them is to make the stem stunt so that there will be more stem grow to the side and not growing taller. After I went to Saang, my mindset has changed. I can not believe how much they get profit for those chemical vegetables per round. They can get double how much they spend per round and even triple if the vegetables per kg go even higher than normal. Also, my mindset changes and do not want to eat vegetables anymore after knowing how many chemicals they use in vegetables.
At the end from just this one trip, I have learned tons of things from chemicals. There are also tons of type of chemical and also of them have a different function to do with plants. Some help to make plants green, some help plants to grow bigger, some make stem stunt and some more help plant to look scorch so that people think it is organic. My prediction in the future, I think that those people won’t stop growing chemically because they want to compete with each other, so if only one people still doing it, everyone in that community will do it too. I think that in the future people will change their mindset to organic by buying all of the vegetables at the supermarket but still, those people won’t stop growing chemical.