Agricultural production

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 ...

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 ...

More than 100 people from two communes in Kratie province’s Sambor district gathered yesterday for a three-day protest in front of the provincial office of Think Biotech, a Korean-owned timber company villagers say is encroaching on their land. As of yesterday evening, 10 armed policemen ...

As Cambodia assesses its development goals, a study has found that many Cambodians want to see an improved judicial system, better education, improved agriculture and more human rights. A broad consortium of local and international development agencies spent the early part of the year conducting conferences ...

AEON Microfinance (Cambodia) Co Ltd says it has expanded its installment payment services into the agricultural sector, a new business type industry insiders say could be successful, but will still not be enough to strengthen one of Cambodia’s most crucial economic sectors. “We will co-operate with ...

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 ...

U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi on Tuesday received a thorny reception from hundreds of students at a Phnom Penh university, who angrily questioned his impartiality and unfurled banners calling for him to end his work in Cambodia. Special rapporteur Subedi delivered a lecture to about ...

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 ...

The father of three youths allegedly beaten by DM Group workers earlier this month said court officers yesterday threatened to imprison him if he did not agree to compromise with the company and drop the case. Ry Sarun appeared at Ratanakkiri Provincial Court yesterday to answer ...

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 ...

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 ...

A well-known community representative who has long battled alleged land-grabbing by economic land concessionaire Pheapimex Group was arrested on fraud accusations and jailed in Pursat province’s Krakor district yesterday.Fellow community representative Lun Sivy, 42, said Kuch Veng, a member of the Cambodian Peace Network, was ...

A local official and four ethnic minority Tompuon villagers appeared in a Ratanakkiri court on Friday to face accusations of land-grabbing and protesting against a private company that purchased their land in 2007, authorities said yesterday. Rocham Pheun, an assistant to the chief of Keh Chung ...

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 ...