Kum Sreymom is a rice farmer and mother of two. She’s had a hard season of rice growing, with droughts, floods, increasing farming costs, and decreasing rice prices. Sreymom had to take out multiple loans to stay afloat. Photo taken in Battambang Province, Cambodia on December 13, 2022. Hanna Hett/The World

2023-10-06-jrl01555 — Kum Sreymom is a rice farmer and mother of two. She’s had a hard season of rice growing, with droughts, floods, increasing farming costs, and decreasing rice prices. Sreymom had to take out multiple loans to stay afloat. Photo taken in Battambang Province, Cambodia on December 13, 2022. Hanna Hett/The World

Microfinance was meant to help the world’s poor, but in Cambodia, it’s plunging people deeper into debt

Microfinance was hailed as a way to change the lives of hundreds of millions of people without access to credit. It worked so well that Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus was awarded a Nobel Prize. But then, banks jumped in to get in on the profits. To manage high debt levels, Cambodians are migrating for work, eating less and even pulling their children out of school.

October 19, 2023

by The World

Kum Sreymom, a Cambodian rice farmer, talks shop with other farmers. They’re sitting in the shade of a farm shed on the vast flood plains of Tonle Sap, Cambodia’s great lake.

It’s mid-December 2022, and the waters have recently receded. Surrounding them is an expanse of newly planted rice fields.

Sreymom’s had a challenging few months. Both droughts and floods damaged her rice crops. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused fertilizer and fuel costs to skyrocket. Rice prices went down.

In full: https://theworld.org/stories/2023-10-18/microfinance-was-meant-help-world-s-poor-cambodia-it-s-plunging-people-deeper

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