Agricultural policy and administration

While last year was full of good news for Cambodian rice exports, which hit a record-breaking 378,800 tons, 2014 is getting off to a much slower start. Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s controversial pledge to pay farmers above market rates for their rice is coming ...

About a year after offering the country’s sole agriculture policy, Forte Insurance is struggling to sell coverage. “We still need time to get farmers to understand the benefits of agricultural insurance,” said Youk Chamroenrith, director and general manager of Forte. “We have four clients signed up ...

Cambodia exported 21,536 tons of milled rice in January of 2014, down 4,190 tons (16%) compared to 25,726 tons exported in the same period of last year, according to a report on agriculture, forestry and fishery. ...

The World Bank says it will investigate reports from indigenous groups in Cambodia that a company funded by the bank’s International Finance Corporation is involved in deforestation and land grabs. The bank’s Office of the Compliance Adviser Ombudsman, or CAO, will first examine the credibility of ...

More than 30 families continued to demonstrate in Preah Vihear province’s Chheb district on Friday and Saturday over what they say is the illegal clearing of land by a Chinese company, villagers said Sunday. The families accuse Rui Feng (Cambodia) International of clearing 500 hectares of ...

Police and military police in Kratie province’s Snuol district on Wednesday burned to the ground 56 homes they said were on protected land, causing displaced villagers to block National Road 76 in protest for four hours, officials said. Snuol district Governor Kong Kimny said Thursday that ...

In late January, five of the 10 chickens owned by Leng Lal, a subsistence rice farmer in Kratie province, suddenly died. Although Mr. Lal, 40, said he knew the dead birds might be dangerous and he should burn and bury the carcasses, he instructed his 8-year-old ...

The government on Monday agreed to a comprehensive solution for rural families who have lost their land to well-connected agricultural plantations exporting sugar to the European Union (E.U.) duty free and will meet again early next month to discuss details. The decision was made at a ...

More than a dozen ethnic minority communities from Cambodia’s northeast filed a complaint with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) on Monday, accusing it of breaking its own safeguard policies by investing in rubber plantations they say are stealing their land and illegally logging their forests. The ...

Some of the hundreds of families losing land and community forest to Vietnamese-owned rubber plantations in Cambodia’s northeast will this week file a complaint with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) over the investment it has made in the plantations’ parent company. Eang Vuthy, executive director of ...

The director of a CPP senator’s sugar plantation accused of stealing land from hundreds of families said Wednesday that most locals were happy with the new jobs the plantation has generated, a week after a visiting European Union parliamentarian renewed calls for an investigation of ...

Four villagers locked in a land dispute with an agribusiness firm in Banteay Meanchey province said Tuesday that they had been summonsed to the provincial court over a property damage lawsuit filed by the company. The suit was originally filed last year, but villagers said they ...

Cambodia has 325,900 hectares of rubber plantations as of last year, up 16 percent compared with 280,350 hectares in a year earlier, a report of the Ministry of Agriculture showed Monday. Some 78,444 hectares of them are old enough to be yielded, the report said, adding ...

Sugar plantations that benefit from the European Union’s Everything But Arms (EBA) scheme, which allows preferential access to the E.U.’s market, have further impoverished Cambodia’s poor, and an investigation needs to be launched, a member of the European Parliament (MEP) said on Friday. Patrice Tirolien, MEP ...

The French Agency for Development (AFD) has pledged $359 million in grants and loans to Cambodia over the next three years, state news agency AKP reported Friday. ...

Shareholders will want answers from ANZ bank after it was revealed this week that the banking giant’s joint venture in Cambodia financed ruling party senator Ly Yong Phat’s controversial sugar plantation, the Responsible Investment Association Australia (RIAA) said yesterday. Environmental audit documents obtained by the Post on Tuesday ...

Cambodia exported 2.9 million tons of agricultural products last year, roughly the same as 2012, but experts say the figure does not reflect the huge potential for the market. According to official data from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, exports included more than 1 ...

Cambodia had produced 9.3 million tons of paddy rice in 2013, which was comparable to the amount in 2012, according to the report of the Ministry of Agriculture on Thursday.​ Hean Vanhorn, director of the single window secretariat for facilitating milled rice exports, called on ...

The European Parliament has passed a resolution calling on the bloc’s executive body to urgently act on an EU preferential trade scheme found to have carried high risks of human rights violations in Cambodia through land evictions for industrial sugar development. In a January 16 resolution, ...

Almost 50 livestock slaughterers in Preah Vihear town yesterday protested a rise in taxes and fees they must to pay on their products. Pin Raksmey, chief of the committee at Kampong Pranak market, said that the problem was out of his hands. ...

Last week marked the end of the annual fishing season and many who had gathered on the riverbanks to buy and sell fish in the Russei Keo district of Phnom Penh called it the best season in years. An abundance of fish, there were bargain prices ...

Two months ago, Sok Sathya spent less than a dollar for a kilogram of oranges to sell from his sidewalk stall across from a row of garment factories in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district. Now the same oranges cost Mr. Sathya, 39, more than 6,000 riel, or ...

Cambodia’s trade volume with foreign countries amounted to 15.9 billion U.S. dollars last year, up 18 percent compared with 13.4 billion U.S. dollars in a year earlier, according to the report of the Commerce Ministry on Wednesday. The country had exported products in equivalent to 6.9 ...

Rice exports increased from 205,717 tons in 2012 to 378,856 tons in 2013 as a result of high demand from the European Union as well as countries in Asia, according to figures released Thursday by the Ministry of Agriculture. France imported the most Cambodian milled rice, ...