The New Black Gold

Farmers eagerly host these furry guests in their orchards and collect their excrement – Cambodia’s answer to manure

- Claire B. Munton

When life gives you bats, collect guano.

Farmers in the backwaters of Cambodia have lived by this rule for as long as they can remember. Take Hoerm Oerun in the bucolic southeast, for example. Every day, the grandmother of four squats in her orchard in Kandal province between a pagoda and patchwork of paddies that gives capital Phnom Penh its daily rice.

Oerun’s trees bear no fruit. They have been barren for more than three decades. Instead, she sweeps at bat droppings: pungent nutbrown pellets that collect in murky rings below her trees and act as a valuable natural fertiliser. “Most people here are farmers,” Oerun says, “and most of them use the guano.” With a wink, she pats the swollen sack at her feet.

Oerun has forged a lucrative and symbiotic relationship with the diminutive creatures whose guano feeds her family, not to mention local crops. Bat farmers like her can make USD22 a month in guano sales per roost – and with some harvesting from over 20 roosts, this can add up to over USD5,000 a year. With more than 30 trees to her name, Oerun can collect 12 kilograms of the precious waste per day. The substance has even been dubbed “black gold” by conservation biologist Neil Furey, who specialises in researching Southeast Asian bats.