Sothy’s Pepper Farm started, in this form, on 11 March 2013, when Ms. SORN Sothy took it over from its former owner, who had planted what is now our pepper field #1 in 2007. We added another pepper field in 2014, and the fourth and fifth fields were added in September 2015. In 2019, another pepper field was added, which is not far from the original farm. So that resulted in a total number of 2000 pepper poles.
The total area is now slightly over 4 hectares. The good part of the land is covered by fruit trees – Bananas, Durian, Jackfruit, Mangoes, Papayas, and Rambutan. But we lost many Durian trees in 2016 during an extremely hot and dry season.
The farm is registered with the Ministry of Commerce.
Sothy’s Pepper Farm is dedicated not only to produce pepper and other fruits, but we are also committed to share information about our work with our visitors. We provide free Pepper Tours to our visitors in English, but also in Cambodian, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish.
Kampot Pepper is the first Cambodian product to benefit from the World Trade Association status of Protected Geographical Indication, like – to use widely known examples – Champagne from the region of the Champagne in France, or Parma Ham from the Italian town of Parma.
Sothy’s Pepper Farm is a member of the Kampot Pepper Promotion Association. All members follow the guidelines of the French organization EcoCert – we are certified to follow ecologically oriented procedures: we do not use chemical fertilizers, nor do we use chemical insecticides to control insects which do damage to the pepper plants, but we use the leaves and seeds of some local plants to make our own insecticides. We also do not use chemical fertilizers, but only the excrements of cows and bats.
According to the Kampot Pepper Promotion Association, all is members together produced about 100 tonnes of Kampot Pepper in 2019, in 2021 it was 130 tons.
Sothy’s Pepper Farm is also following other goals of making use of natural resources: all the electricity on the farm is produced by solar panels: for light, for fans, for kitchen machinery, to pump the water up from the well, from 62 meters deep down, and for the vacuum packing machine for the pepper.
We have also several simple bamboo thatched bungalows, in response to the questions from visitors if there is also the possibility to stay here overnight. Some of them are also used as staff housing, and some for volunteers from many countries who join us for some weeks.