A series of photo-essays with narration shining light on the lives of informal workers and other usually invisible individuals along the chain from producer to consumer, showcasing a day in their life and honoring the human stories behind Cambodia’s food systems.

Ever wonder where the food you eat comes from, and the hands involved in caring for it and bringing it to your plate? From farm to table and table to farm, wandering through the steps of the cycle of food, from pre-production to waste management (e.g. use of kitchen waste for fish feed, compost as organic fertilizer, etc), not forgetting all the farmers who populate the most of Cambodia’s countryside, the middlemen bringing vegetables to the city, the street sellers and market venders in the street markets, or phsars in Khmer language. 

On our research and field trips we found many stories, from organic to conventional farmers, growing cabbages and all sorts of vegetables; visited shops selling seeds and fertilizers to homes where handmade food-processing is happening everyday, such as making health supplements from turmeric roots and honey. Orange-tainted fingers and wide smiles, wrinkled hands from decades of hard work on the land, these are the invisible heros taking care of our bodies' nutrition. The food systems in Cambodia rely on a myriad of lives, informal workers and street sellers, old-school farmers and young innovative entrepreneurs.

We need to give visibility and more value to the people responsible for the food we eat. Not only as a way to research the origins of the ingredients ending up on our plate but, especially, to present the human side of the myriad of lives responsible for planting, growing, processing, transporting and selling them. Because in the end, all that we eat is food with stories inside.