CAMBODIA - Rice farmers in this Southeast Asian nation have traditionally cleared the land by hand. At the 500-acre farm in northwestern Batta m bang province where Sam Pov works, for instance, 30 people would shred the weeds and trees before planting. But large-scale migration for construction jobs in Phnom Penh,the capital, has created a rural labor shortage, forcing Cam- bodians to shift to newer technologies. With outside aid, including a new $600 million loan from Kuwait, they are adopting modern farm machinery. Sam Pov's farm now uses a $2,000 waste shredder, which he says "makes our lives so much easier. "The result: Cambodia is poised to become the region's next big food exporter. It could produce 1 5 million tons of rice per year, up from the current 6 million tons, if it relied more on machines and cultivated all available land, according to the Council for Agricultural and Rural Development. -GEOFF CAIN

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