Jul 165 min read

Cambodia & Initiative: Pierre-Yves Clais, " diversifying and reinventing to face difficult times "

One of our magazine's most loyal contributors, Pierre-Yves Clais naturally chose our columns to talk about his new activities aimed at generating additional income in the face of a still gloomy tourism situation.

How is Pierre-Yves Clais doing in 2024?

We have to admit that we have seen better times... the effects of Covid are still present, as the upturn in tourism has been very disappointing.

Surprisingly, Cambodia is having real problems attracting international tourism, while our immediate neighbours, Thailand and Vietnam, all seem to be back to normal! There is certainly an image and promotional deficit that can only be remedied by the Ministry of Tourism...

What are the reasons for this new activity?

At the start of the Covid pandemic, driven by the need to find new income, we had to re-invent ourselves somewhat, in professional terms. So we came up with the idea of developing the farm we own in Kep in a different way. Having herself been raised in the countryside, Chenda loves growing her own fruit and vegetables. At a time when chemicals are ubiquitous in the food sold at the market, it's good to have your own source of supply, but we produce much more than the family needs and it's not easy to market.

Everyone produces mangoes or pineapples in the same season, so market prices are very low. If you can't process these products, and therefore reinvest in drying them, turning them into fruit juice or jam, while paying for overpriced electricity, you either sell at a loss or give them to your family, to associations that look after orphans and disabled people, or even to our elephants, who love them.

"Only Kep pepper is really profitable, but we don't produce enough of it.”

So we've added to our range by developing wellness capsules with our various spices: turmeric, turmeric & pepper, turmeric, pepper & ginger, black ginger, galangal... and we also sell products from Ratanakiri: cashew nuts, avocados, etc.

Tell us more about your new activities

My wife loves plants, but I prefer animals. So I've started to diversify the henhouse by adding geese and guinea fowl, which I love the taste of.

But while the former are very hardy and pose no particular problems, the latter are not easy to keep... Guinea fowl lay eggs all over the place, so you have to find their eggs and put them in incubators until the young hatch, then put them in cages while they grow up. What's more, these animals roam a long way, often to neighbouring farms, and we have a lot of losses. Sometimes 15 guinea fowl are missing, then 25.... In three years we've had to eat two of them, far fewer than our neighbours...

It was thanks to a recurring question from visitors to our hotels that I came up with a new idea!

They often ask if we miss anything about France, to which I invariably reply:

"Nothing, we have everything we want here, friends and wine from all over the world, food from France and all the countries in the region, and since the advent of the internet we can happily download films, music and books. The only thing I miss is my mum's mutton stew!”

Indeed, imported from Australia or New Zealand, mutton is generally unaffordable in Cambodia. You sometimes see goats in the Khmer countryside, but you hardly ever see sheep. So it took a Muslim friend to take us to a Cham district some forty kilometres north-west of Phnom Penh to enable us to buy a dozen rather ungainly sheep of various sizes and species.

What were the difficulties involved?

The sheep adapted very quickly to their new seaside environment, putting on weight very quickly and starting to have young. The main problem was the neighbours' dogs that came into the house and cut the throats of our animals. We immediately counter-attacked and brought in our own dogs, which certainly got rid of the predators, but then did exactly the same thing as them - not everyone is a sheepdog...

The second problem is that, while sheep may not be as agile as goats, they are nonetheless quite destructive...

"I had the image of an animal grazing with its nose to the grass around Marie-Antoinette and the ladies of the court, which was a big mistake!”

A sheep knows how to stand up and devour any tree that hasn't grown tall enough. So the little flock wreaked havoc, eating hundreds of freshly planted durians, much to my wife's dismay!

Raised in semi-freedom, fed naturally on grass, flowers and fruit (particularly at the end of the dry season), our sheep are generally very healthy and easy to look after

The temperate climate of Kep and the pastures on our farm allow them to roam and graze on fresh, local grass, as nature intended. They live in natural conditions all year round, which promotes their well-being and limits stress.

This grass-fed diet means that our mutton is naturally tender and lean, with a pure, mild flavour. The meat is lower in saturated fats, but richer in vitamins A and E and omega-3 fatty acids than grain-fed meat, and it also contains more protein.

That said, before we could enjoy our first chops, we had to learn a thing or two about sheep, in particular how to shear the shaggiest of our beasts. And as nothing is available locally for sheep, we initially used office scissors. It took my daughters and I two hours, and a few blisters on our fingers, to completely strip an adult sheep!

Tail docking and castration of young males using a rubber band were also part of the programme... Fortunately, in this day and age, a quick trip to YouTube followed by the dispatch of a few tools from France did the trick!

Then comes the delicate moment when you have to turn your cute sheep into butcher's meat. You still have to do it yourself, and here again, YouTube and a friend with some good advice mean that, little by little, you can do a decent job!

What are your ambitions and hopes?

The quality of the product is now our best ally, attracted by a few publications on Facebook, friends order to taste, then talk about it around them, some renowned restaurants have also trusted us.

Our flock is growing, we've built a second, much larger sheepfold, the first of which will be used as a nursery, and we're confident of reaching 150 sheep in about a year's time.

However, despite certain "pressures", the production of milk, wool and sheepskin jackets has not yet been considered

In conclusion, our small-scale local farming is an artisanal process that respects the environment. By diversifying the local economy a little, it allows us to showcase in a different way the fabulous terroir of the Kep-Kampot region, which is already known for several flagship products such as pepper, crab, fleur de sel and durian.

Our 'salt meadow' sheep now offer an alternative to imported products through a short, ecological circuit that can be summed up as follows: "from the meadow to your plate".