By dramatically increasing rice harvests throughout Cambodia, Pol Pot hoped the country would produce 26.7 million tons of paddy over the lifetime of the plan, recreating what he assumed had been the state-directed plenitude of Angkorean times. Massive irrigation works, it was thought, would make these developments feasible. About half of the production was to be kept aside for seed, food, and “reserves and welfare.” The exported surplus would earn $1.4 billion in foreign exchange. The income, in turn, was to be used to purchase farm machinery, tools, fertilizer, and insecticide to increase agricultural production. Roughly two-thirds of the income was to be redirected to the zones producing the rice, with the remainder held in reserve for national priorities. Defense expenditures were expected to reach $37 million over four years, with the southwestern and northwestern zones, bordering Thailand, receiving $23 million of that figure. At a later stage, additional foreign exchange would be used to finance industrial development.11

Unfortunately, paddy production was much lower in 1976-1977 than expected, particularly in the northwest, where most of the reserves intended to feed the people were designated as surpluses by beleaguered cadre and taken to unknown destinations. Some of the rice was exported to China. By the end of 1976, most “new people” in the northwest were badly undernourished. The situation deteriorated in 1977, when thousands more starved to death while others became ineffective because of illness and insufficient food. Reports of these conditions took time to reach the “Higher Organization,” and since disagreement with the organization amounted to treason, the reports were never critical of the plan or its framers. Instead, the news transmitted up the line was always good, causing false optimism at the top even as rice production faltered and rural workers died.12

More than half the tables in the Four Year Plan referred to the rice campaign. Other crops—such as jute, corn, coconuts, tobacco, and cotton—were mentioned but received less emphasis. After all, the income these crops would produce ($29 million) was barely 2 percent of the income expected to be earned from rice. In general, those portions of the plan that did not deal with rice seem hastily written and poorly conceived. The text, it seems, was tailored to fit the priorities of the party’s leaders, who had placed their bets on rice.