Cambodia holds royal ploughing ceremony in northwest province

PHNOM PENH, May 6 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia on Wednesday celebrated a traditional royal ploughing day, which marked the annual beginning of the farming season.

King Norodom Sihamoni presided over the event, which was held in northwest Cambodia's Battambong province and live broadcast on the state-run National Television of Cambodia.

Foreign diplomats to Cambodia were invited for the ceremony.

Three pairs of royal oxen were used to plough and predict agricultural yields and weather in the year. After three rounds of ploughing across a field, the oxen were offered seven plates of food: rice, corn, green bean, sesame, water, fresh-cut grass, and wine.

Customarily, if the oxen eat a lot of agricultural items, it is believed that agricultural crops will give high output in the year, but if they eat little, it is thought that the yields will be low.

If the oxen eat grass and wine, it will be forecast that cattle will be plagued by epidemics, and if they drink a lot of water, floods will be expected.

At the event, the oxen ate green bean and corn. A court soothsayer predicted that the two kinds of crops would give high yields this year.

"This is just a prediction based on the custom of the royal ploughing ceremony in the old era," Kang Keng, head of the soothsayers at the Royal Palace, announced, adding "This ceremony is to notify the farmers that agricultural season has come."

The Southeast Asian nation is an agrarian country with around 80 percent of the population being farmers, and the agricultural sector accounted for 28.7 percent of the country's gross domestic product in 2014, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.