Agricultural commodities, processing and products

About 50 police, soldiers and environmental officials yesterday demolished two houses and cut down thousands of trees belonging to families who are locked in a land dispute with MDS Import Export Co, owned by tycoon Try Pheap, villagers in Pursat province claimed. Fellow villager Khouch ...

On the palm-studded plains of Cambodia, rice farmers’ eyes light up with the prospect of sending their crop northward to China. The poor Southeast Asian nation had been trying for several years to export rice to the mainland but only last year did it gain ...

Some 300 families from Bantey Meanchey province’s Preah Netr Preah district-embroiled in two separate long-running disputes with Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF)-yesterday submitted complaints to the provincial governor asking for permission to temporarily farm on the land until the ownership dispute is resolved, villagers and ...

Two firms holding concessions in rapidly disappearing northern forests are amassing stockpiles of tens of thousands of luxury logs cut both within and outside their leases and trucking them on to Vietnam, the Cambodian Center for Human Rights has alleged. CCHR investigators that tracked logging operations ...

More than 300 protesters seized two company trucks outside the Kratie office of Korean-owned timber company Think Biotech Co yesterday as protests by villagers who allege land-grabbing continued for a second day. “We have seized the company’s two trucks to ask the company to come ...

The largest complex of sugarcane, ethanol and thermal power plants in Cambodia was inaugurated in Okrieng commune, Sombour district, Kratie province on May 26. Addressing the ceremony, Cambodia’s Deputy Prime Minister Yim Chay Ly emphasized that the complex inauguration in Kratie was the outcome of the ...

An online petition has been launched calling on English Premier League football club Arsenal to break its ties with a Vietnamese rubber company accused of land grabbing and deforestation in Cambodia. A report by London-based Glob­al Wit­ness this month named Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) as ...

Cambodian milled rice exports are gradually lessening their dependency on a single market by expanding their shipping destination in Asia, a sign insiders say is good news for the industry. Kim Savuth, president of the Federation of Cambodian Rice Exporters, told the Post yesterday that milled ...

Opposition lawmaker Son Chhay said yesterday that he would ask the government to cancel the land concession of a Vietnamese rubber firm in Ratanakkiri province he accused of logging and exporting wood illegally. Mr. Chay, a candidate in July’s national election for the Cambodia National Rescue ...

Officials are seeking expert firms to implement projects on so-called contract farming and the enhancement of the involvement of farmers’ organisations in paddy collecting and processing, officials said. Contract farming is an agreement on agricultural production carried out between a farmer and buyers, which establishes conditions ...

Cambodia launched Tuesday the second phase of cassava development project under the support of China and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Cambodia and China signed a Protocol on the Exports of Cambodian Cassava to Chinese Market in December 2010, under which China allowed Cambodia ...

Two-way trade between Vietnam and Cambodia in the first four months of the year reached nearly US$1.3 billion, a 10 per cent rise over the same period last year. According to the Vietnam Trade Office in Cambodia, Vietnam’s exports to Cambodia fetched over $1 billion while ...

This year’s weather has proven too hot for the Kingdom’s famous Kampot pepper, as yields of the spice dropped for the first time since 2008. Some 22 tonnes of pepper were harvested this year between January and May, short of the 27 tonnes predicted for this ...

Accessing low-interest loans for rice cultivation is a challenge because the industry in Cambodia is dependant upon rainfall and not irrigation and is thus more risky, experts said last week. In a meeting on the private sector development in the rice sector, Lim Heng, vice president ...

A year after a massive military raid here that left a 14-year old girl dead and hundreds of families evicted, there remains little sign of the original land dispute that turned this rural village into a hotbed of agitation. But a new firm and a government-issued ...

The European union’s executive arm has responded to its parliamentarians’ concerns over rights abuses stemming from Cambodia’s economic land concessions, maintaining that, should the need arise, it “will be ready” to withdraw from its preferential trade agreements with the Kingdom. In a joint letter to concerned ...

The trade commissioner and foreign affairs representative of the European Union (E.U.) have turned down a request from 13 members of the European Parlia­ment that they immediately investigate Cambodia’s much criticized economic land concessions, but said they were monitoring the issue closely. In a March letter ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen said Wednesday that he hoped land being registered to rural families as part of the government’s nationwide land-titling program would be used to cultivate rubber trees in order to help the country compete with Vietnam as the world’s third-largest rubber exporter. ...

The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court yesterday charged two staffers of Vietnamese rubber concessionaire Hoang Anh Ratanakkiri (CRD) with causing intentional damage for allegedly setting fire to several homes belonging to a landowner with whom they were embroiled in a land dispute, deputy prosecutor Mom Vanda said. ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday inaugurated a rubber processing plant here, saying the factory would contribute to developing the country’s fast-growing rubber sector. The 7 million U.S. dollar plant, invested by Cambodia’s Sopheak Nika Investment Agro-Industry Company, was built on the area of 9 ...

Cambodia’s cassava exports reached 245,438 tonnes in the first quarter this year, a 47 per cent decline quarter-on-quarter, from 465,640 tonnes in the final quarter of last year, according to statistics from the Ministry of Commerce released early this month. While most exports went to Thailand, ...

A Vietnamese rubber tycoon has rejected accusations by Global Witness, a group that campaigns on resource issues, that it was involved in a land grabbing crisis in Southeast Asia. Doan Nguyen Duc, the chairman of Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) Group, told Vietnamese media the information ...

On May 13, we ran an interview with London-based NGO Global Witness accusing the Deutsche Bank and the International Finance Corporation of financing two Vietnamese rubber companies that are allegedly involved in land grabs in Cambodia and Laos. We asked both banks for a response ...

In the wake of a new report from environmental rights group Global Witness rebuking the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Deutsche Bank for investing in rubber plantations accused of illegal logging and forced evictions, both institutions have denied responsibility and deflected the blame ...