Agricultural production

The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court yesterday forced a family whose three children were allegedly beaten by DM Group firm employees last month to accept only $1,000 in compensation in place of the $40,000 the family initially had demanded, the children’s father claimed. Ry Sarun, 52, said that ...

Cassava farmers in Banteay Meanchey province had to import seeds from Thailand this season in response to rapidly-changing weather conditions that interfered with seed growth. Te Haing, a cassava farmer in Banteay Meanchey who planted more than 1,000 hectares this season, told the Post yesterday that ...

More than 700 villagers from five provinces yesterday protested in front of the provincial government headquarters in Kompong Chhnang after losing their community forests to large agro-industry firms. Organized by the Cambodian Grassroots People’s Assembly- a network of communities that includes forestry and land activists as ...

A land titling campaign in Cambodia launched and financed by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s lacks transparency and could leave thousands of people landless, a human rights group said Wednesday, urging the country’s donors to push for reform of the program. The campaign, which employs volunteer youth ...

Okhna Try Pheap’s ballooning empire of exclusive natural resource licences and concessions has been expanded even further with the granting of a special economic zone (SEZ) in Ratanakkiri province. The May 27 issue of the Royal Gazette reveals Pheap was granted a 136-hectare SEZ in O’Yadav ...

Conservation officials have confiscated a truck containing 20 cubic metres of illegally cut, luxury-grade timber from an economic land concession owned by the firm TTY Corporation, a district official said yesterday. Kratie provincial officials seized the logs, along with two trucks and two cars on Monday ...

Land Management Minister Im Chum Lim awarded a community of ethnic minority Banong in Mondolkiri province a communal land tile to their ancestral land last week, only the eighth communal land title to be handed out since the 2001 Land Law made them available. The title ...

Fifteen villagers representing 18 families from Kratie province involved in an ongoing dispute with the Sovan Vuthy Rubber Company yesterday submitted a petition to the Ministry of Land Management calling for intervention after the company allegedly cleared their farmland. The families say they have lived ...

About 200 farmers protested in front of the Ministry of Agriculture on Friday and submitted a petition requesting changes to a draft law on the management of agricultural land, which rights groups have said could effectively legalize land grabs from poor farmers. The government says the ...

About 250 laborers working at a newly opened $90-million sugar factory complex in Kratie province-hailed by the government as a boon to Cambodia’s economy-staged a protest last Saturday morning demanding to be reimbursed for two weeks worth of unpaid wages. District governor Heng Soha acted ...

Cambodia’s exports of milled rice have sharply increased in the first five months of this year thanks to rising international market demand and country’s rice promotion strategy, an official said Thursday. The country had exported 146,800 tons of milled rice during January-May period this year, up ...

The end of export restrictions in Thailand and a lowering of economic growth forecasts out of top rubber importers China, the United States and Germany have caused natural rubber prices around Asia − and in Cambodia’s local industry − to fall from a two-month high. Future ...

About 200 people celebrating World Environment Day on Wednesday gathered in front of the National Assembly to submit a petition asking the government to stop the destruction of Cambodia’s forests. A report released by the WWF last month said that Cambodia has lost almost a ...

Communities living in the protected Snuol wildlife sanctuary in Kratie province said yesterday that the sanctuary was being destroyed by private companies acting in collusion with local wildlife officers. Snuol forest community representative Mom Sakim said private interests were claiming large areas of the sanctuary without ...

Oddar Meanchey province deputy governor Lon An yesterday confirmed CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat’s involvement in a trio of sugar cane plantations that rights groups took to the National Human rights Commission of Thailand last week, but denied their allegations of rights abuses. The deputy ...

Japanese retail company MUJI announced the development of an eco-friendly natural dyeing plant in Cambodia, a press release on Sunday said. The plan is part of the Business Call to Action, a global initiative supported by several international organisations and hosted by the UN Development Programme ...

Logging baron Try Pheap’s MDS Import Export Co, Ltd has been granted a licence to collect and process the controversial plant known as yellow vine around the Stung Atay hydropower dam in the Cardamom Mountains, according to documents received by the Post yesterday. The vine has ...

Asia’s largest sugar company has been accused of torching hundreds of homes, orchestrating the imprisonment of a pregnant activist and using security forces to beat villagers – among a raft of other grave human rights abuses – by communities in Oddar Meanchey province. The allegations levelled ...

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 ...

More than 300 ethnic Jarai families from Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district in longstanding land disputes with two Vietnamese land concessionaires submitted a petition to UN human rights officers yesterday asking for help. Village representative Romas Chvat said locals were participating in an NGO-led workshop on protest ...

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 ...

The Cambodian Centre for Study and Development in Agriculture (CEDAC) yesterday introduced techniques to prepare a good rice harvest for farmers ahead of the rainy season, CEDAC announced. Yang Saing Koma, president of CEDAC, said farmers could improve their harvests if they follow the seven steps. ...

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 ...