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"Salt" is an essential ingredient for many kinds of foods and helps keep the human body strong and healthy. Not only that, salt is also used in many other ways, in everyday life, in the food and cosmetics industry, and in spiritual ceremony.
To this day, Cambodia does not have to worry about finding salt ores, as there are coastal provinces that can produce enough salt to supply the country's consumption. In the past, the people who live along the seaside traditionally made salt by extracting seawater and boiling it into salt, and that production was only for family use, not for sale.
Then, in 1941-1942, a Cambodian named Poch deforested Ang Kol area (now in Phnom Leav commune, Kampong Trach district, Kampot province) to produce salt. At that time, he brought a Chinese man named Cheng from Bassac district (Kampuchea Krom) who knew how to make salt to help. Later, other businessmen came to do this business, so the salt production became more and more widespread until it reached the factory for processing salt.
Some people in that area can grow rice and harvest salt because rice planting and salt production are done in different seasons. Rice is grown in rainy season and salt is produced in the dry season. The salt evaporation fields are generally inactive after the New Year. The way to cultivate salt fields is that they first need a fairly large amount of land near the sea, because they have to drain salt water into a large dam called“Srae Hal” or salt evaporation field. After that, they have fields that are built with dams next to each other, continuing inside the mainland. The salinity of the salt is calculated by measuring the salinity with a thermometer. The water in the dry field has a salinity of only "level 2". Then the water is left to "sleep" overnight in the dry field and then drained into the next field, where the salinity level rises to 5 degrees. "If the salinity level reaches "level 2" no plants can grow, not even sea fish can survive, and the bottom of the field is unusually hot. The water at this point is only around 4cm deep. The next day, it was drained to another field, when the salinity level reached "10". This was done until the end of the field, where the salinity level had risen to “level 25”, and a lump of salt appeared.
The last field is called "cooked field," and the salt that is formed is called “Grow”. The work here is called “cultivating salt”. They have to hurry to "collect" and put it in storage every day, otherwise, the salt will freeze. When it is around 8cm high and the salt will harden like a rock. The hotter the day, the faster the water evaporates, and the faster the salt grows. The water is very hot, can reach 45 degrees.
When collecting salt every day, sometimes it rains. If it rains a little or moderately, it does not cause any major problems, but if it rains too much, fresh water is drained through a canal. Drainage is not difficult because fresh water is lighter than salt water, so fresh water is on the surface. On the other hand, if fresh water is not drained, it will cause moss to grow suddenly. That is why the first thing to do is to clean the canals and clean all the fields so that there is no moss and then compress the soil. The salt depot must be built from plants such as wood or bamboo, etc. If metal is used, it will be rusty.
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