Agricultural production

A Vietnamese firm behind several Cambodian rubber plantations accused of rampant land grabbing and illegal logging has bowed to a request from the International Finance Corporation (IFC)—which helps fund its operations—to temporarily suspend forest clearing at some of its local subsidiaries. In an April 28 decision, ...

A World Bank-supported rubber company accused of land grabs has suspended some of its projects, as an investigation by the bank continues. The Hoang Anh Gia Lai company, which received support from the bank’s International Finance Corporation, said in a decision following an April 2 ...

Dozens of representatives from at least 100 recently evicted families accused of illegally occupying state land in Kratie province traveled to Phnom Penh on Monday morning to petition Prime Minister Hun Sen for his help getting their land back. The families say local authorities have been ...

About 40 residents from Kratie province rallied on Monday in front of Wat Botum pagoda in order to present a petition to Prime Minister Hun Sen over land disputes in their community. ...

Cambodia exported about 120,291 tons of rice in first four months of calendar year 2014, up about 1.5% from about 118,504 tons rice exported in the same period last year, according to data from the Secretariat of One Window Service of Rice Export Formality (SOWS-REF). ...

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) says its Ibis Rice project has recorded a production surplus for the first time in its five-year history, prompting a bid to export the boutique product overseas. Concentrated in Preah Vihear province, Ibis Rice farmers produced more than 435 tonnes of ...

ANZ’s financing of ruling party senator Ly Yong Phat’s controversial sugar plantation has come under fire once again, this time in an investigation by NGO Oxfam into Australia’s big four banks and their links to rights abuses in developing countries. In a report titled “Banking on ...

Cambodia will end customs fees for milled rice exports with effect from May 1, 2014, in order to reduce production costs and boost Cambodia’s competitiveness in the international market, according to local sources. ...

First Sum Tea lost her farm. Then she lost her son. Sum Tea is one of hundreds of farmers who lost her small landholding in 2006 when the Cambodian government granted Phnom Penh Sugar, a company owned by Cambodian tycoon and ruling party senator Ly Yong ...

Environment Minister Say Sam Al met with private firms with land concessions last week to gauge their compliance with government rules and regulations, and adherence to their own contracts. Amid mounting local and international pressure, Prime Minister Hun Sen in mid-2012 ordered a freeze on ...

Members of a Lao ethnic community in Ratanakkiri province allegedly burned down three makeshift houses belonging to a rubber plantation on Monday. The 250 villagers in Veun Sai district’s Hatpak village accuse Indian-owned SK Company of encroaching on the forest and ignoring markers demarcating village farmland, ...

Battambang Rice Investment Co Ltd says it has been certified as the first rice mill in Cambodia with Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) and Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP). In a statement, the company said it received confirmation of GMP and HACCP certification in a ...

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has launched an internal investigation into a complaint lodged against the institution for investing in a Vietnamese rubber firm accused of illegal logging and land grabbing in Ratanakkiri, an NGO and villager said yesterday. Earlier this month, representatives of the IFC’s ...

Cambodia’s milled rice production is expected to increase to around 6 million tons (about 9.34 million tons, basis paddy) in 2013, up about 1% from the previous year, according to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). ...

The Sihanoukville Autonomous Port, Cambodia’s largest shipping facility, reported a 13 percent rise in cargo shipments in the first three months of this year, a port’s data showed Thursday. Some 862,380 tons of goods had been transported through the port during the January-March period this year, ...

Agriculture tycoon Mong Reththy yesterday confirmed a second shipment of Koe Romeat mangoes, twice the size of the first, will be headed for China this week from his Preah Sihanouk plantation. ...

The scale of mass logging in once-dense woodlands in Cambodia’s north now more closely resembles the free-for-all of a gold rush than the sustainable forestry more often associated with these communities. With the financial backing of powerful businessmen, villagers in three districts of Preah Vihear are ...

Representatives of 50 families in Ratanakkiri’s Andong Meas district filed a complaint with rights group Adhoc yesterday alleging that a Vietnamese concessionaire is responsible for destroying about 50 hectares of cashew plantations. Sorl Penh, 58, a representative for the villagers from Nhang commune, said yesterday that ...

The government-backed Rural Development Bank (RDB) will lend $64 million to Cambodia’s agriculture sector in 2014, the bank’s top official said yesterday. Sun Kunthor, president of RDB, said most of the funding would be used to support growth in Cambodia’s rice sector as it strives to ...

Cambodian paddy rice production fell only slightly during the first half of this year’s dry season, despite 12,000 hectares of usually productive land deemed unusable due to last year’s floods. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, dry season paddy rice production between December ...

The government yesterday accused Licadho of producing wildly misleading figures on land grabs, following the rights group’s announcement earlier this week that land conflicts in Cambodia have affected more than half a million people since 2000. Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Sar Sovan, secretary of ...

Preah Vihear provincial governor Oum Mara has sent a letter to inform Interior Minister Sar Kheng that he is ordering an NGO to close its local offices, on the grounds that the organization is inciting villagers to destroy sugarcane farmed by a Chinese company. In the ...

Police in Preah Vihear province say they have uncovered more evidence of child labor on a Chinese-owned sugarcane plantation and will send the case to court if further investigation confirms their preliminary findings. A former employee of the Lan Feng plantation filed a complaint last month ...

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on Monday warned that allegedly farmed python skins originating from Cambodia could in fact have been harvested in the wild, and called for surveys to determine the scale and impact of possible python hunting in the ...