>>1346638yea, farms make food but you have to physically move food to where the starving people were. not everyone went to the countryside. in this case, a shit ton of refugees fled to cities for safety. in the capital, the population more than tripled. meanwhile, khmer rouge troops patrolled the roads/river and stood in the way of supplies making it there, because they really hated the city slickers:
>Phnom Penh, which had a pre-war population of around 600,000, was overwhelmed by refugees (who continued to flood in from the steadily collapsing defense perimeter), growing to a size of around two million. These helpless and desperate civilians had no jobs and little in the way of food, shelter, or medical care. Their condition (and the government's) only worsened when Khmer Rouge forces gradually gained control of the banks of the Mekong. From the riverbanks, their mines and gunfire steadily reduced the river convoys through which 90 percent of the Republic's supplies moved, bringing relief supplies of food, fuel, and ammunition to the slowly starving city from South Vietnam 