Starling Farm

Starling Farm covers 40 hectares in Kampot province, located between the sea and the mountains on Cambodia’s south western coastline. Cradle of the famous Kampot pepper, where it has been grown and traded since the 10th century.
We are now growing more than thirty thousands pepper plants and seven hundreds mango trees.

The Starling Farm story begin in the early 2000s, when the land was purchased and a small team began clearing it – even digging up a few land mines in the process and relocating the original farmhouse to what was a bomb crater – filled with rubble for the foundations. Pepper planting started in 2002, and after careful nurturing the first plants started producing pepper after three years. Production was small scale in both Starling Farm and the whole region, with no one really putting much focus on pepper, with less than ten tonnes produced annually and mostly consumed locally.

By 2008, concerned by the deforestation problems of Cambodia, we had put new techniques in place – building solid brick columns for the pepper vines to grow around instead of the traditional wooden poles. While the wood poles have to be replaced every few years, the bricks will last for ten or twenty years easily, significantly increasing the benefits of the technique. It’s also come up that it allows us to doubled the amount of pepper we could grow per square meter when compared to traditional wooden poles, where we would have two or three plants around a wooden pole, we could have up to eight around a brick column. This forward thinking techniques give a boost to the production and started people really thinking about pepper farming again.

By 2010, after Kampot pepper was given GI status by the Cambodian Government, so allowing only true Kampot pepper to be named as such – suddenly it was a premium product with limited supply, but with the production growing, Starling Farm started building their brand and product range, and reaching out to bring high quality and geographically recognised Kampot pepper out into the wider world.

Creating products, and introducing the world to Kampot red pepper – more time consuming to produce and rarely produced in quantity, Starling Farm built it’s retail and online presence, and began it’s distribution network through shops, supermarkets, hotels, and its own retail shops.

Farm visits have become commonplace, where a visit to a pepper farm is on every tourist and travellers itinerary when they visit Cambodia and the Kampot region. Kampot is a beautiful quaint town on the banks of the river and is largely under-travelled – the more intrepid that reach the area in person are in for more than a treat for the culinary senses.

Pepper fever is breaking out again, with culinary aficionados again sampling and instantly falling in love with the vibrant and balanced spicy flavour, and the assortment of black, red, white and other peppers to choose from we are now spoiled for choice. Television networks are making documentaries about it, Michelin star chefs are visiting and cooking with it, the world is again starting to talk about, and truly celebrate Kampot pepper for its perfect flavour and aroma.

Over fifty people work at Starling Farm in various capacities from pepper specialists, farm labour, pepper sorting and advanced production techniques, and not forgetting the office and shop in Phnom Penh where we handle and package all your international orders. Further afield, we have a shop in Siem Reap, and products in stores in Asia, America and Europe. Many of our team live on site at the farm whilst others are stuck in the office in the capital city.