Jobless Cambodians are catching rats to feed Vietnamese city dwellers

SLUNG OVER Pen Keo’s shoulder is a big wicker basket containing wire-mesh traps, which he lays, one by one, on a rice field where rats are known to scamper. There are so many traps there already, it is difficult to find space for his. In Takéo, a rural province in southern Cambodia, rat-catching serves two purposes. The creatures would otherwise ravage crops, and can also be sold for tidy sums in neighbouring Vietnam. There rats nourished on a free-range diet of rice stalks and roots are a delicacy. 

For a growing number of Cambodians, rat-catching is a full-time job. The covid-19 pandemic has hurt the formal economy. Unemployment is on the rise. The Asian Development Bank thinks that Cambodia, with a working-age population of 9m or so, lost around 500,000 jobs in 2020. Many who worked in the city have gone home to the countryside, but work there is scarce, too. Between January and April farmers’ wages dropped by a third, according to Angkor Research and Consulting and Future Forum, a think-tank. Mr Pen Keo says he no longer earns enough from tilling his fields because rice is too cheap. Like many hard-up Cambodians, he has exchanged his plough for rat-traps. 

Yet chasing tail, too, is no longer as profitable as it was. On a good day Mr Pen Keo catches 15kg, or about 130 of the pests. But whereas he used to...