Agriculture and fishing
Agriculture
Relocation deals unfair, say families
More than 400 families in Kampong Cham province’s Chup commune had filed a complaint yesterday to local authorities over relocation orders issued last week, villagers said. Hom Hon, 55, a retired rubber plantation worker and former employee of Sopheak Nika Investment Group Company, said that on ...
Cambodia-Vietnam JV targets rice exports
CAVFOOD, a joint venture between Cambodian and Vietnamese companies, launched the first phase of its US$8 million rice mill in Phnom Penh on Friday. The venture is an investment by Cambodian state-owned rice exporter Green Trade and Vietnam’s VNA Food 2 and Bank for Investment and ...
China reaps concession windfalls
About half of the land concessions granted since 1994 are in the hands of Chinese companies, according to data released yesterday by the Cambodian Center for Human Rights. Ouch Leng, CCHR land reform project coordinator, said that from 1994 to 2012, the Cambodian government granted 4,615,745 ...
Protesters Block Highway Over Alleged Land Grabs by Firms
About 500 protesters erected barricades on National Road 76a in Kratie province’s Snuol district on Saturday to protest the loss of their farmland and homes to encroachment by three agro-industry firms: Sovann Rithy, Samnang Angkor and Dai Nam Cambodia, officials said yesterday. The protest, which remained ...
Chinese Embassy Petitioners Sent Packing
Just hours before Chinese President Hu Jintao landed in Phnom Penh on Friday, a group of dismayed Koh Kong province villagers whose land is under threat from a sprawling Chinese tourism project were escorted onto a bus and sent back home before they were able ...
Kingdom, Indonesia said close to rice deal
Cambodia is close to a deal that would ship as much as 20,000 tonnes of milled rice to Indonesia, according to sources familiar with the matter. Thon Virak, director of state-owned rice exporter Green Trade and chairman of Federation of Milled Rice Exporters Association, said Green ...
Tonle Sap water project to help Siem Reap town
The Japanese government sealed the deal yesterday on an agreement to provide Cambodia with a US$86 million loan for a project that will supply Siem Reap town residents with water from the Tonle Sap lake and alleviate their need for water drawn from wells. The 40-year ...
Kingdom, Indonesia said close to rice deal
Cambodia is close to a deal that would ship as much as 20,000 tonnes of milled rice to Indonesia, according to sources familiar with the matter. Thon Virak, director of state-owned rice exporter Green Trade and chairman of Federation of Milled Rice Exporters Association, said Green ...
EU Launches Food Security Program Aimed at Minorities
The European Union has launched a $4.5 million program aimed at increasing food security among indigenous minorities in Ratanakkiri province, including those whose land has been affected by the growing number of economic land concessions in the area. Speaking on the sidelines of the launch in ...
Draft Law Aims to Combat Price Dumping
The government is finalizing a draft law that will aim to prevent importers from price dumping and protect local producers by allowing authorities to raise tariffs on goods, according to a copy of the draft law. In the past, local producers have been negatively affected by ...
No word on Philippines rice deal, exporter says
Green Trade, a state-owned, milled-rice exporter, had not been updated on a government-to-government rice deal with the Philippines despite recent media reports that claimed a deal was near. ...
Philippines set to sign rice supply deal with Cambodia
The Philippines is close to signing a government-to-government rice supply agreement that would make Cambodia a potential supplier of the grain staple to Manila, along with Vietnam and Thailand, agriculture officials said on Monday. The Southeast Asian neighbours aimed to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) ...
Thai agro-processing plant nears completion
BETAGRO Group, one of Thailand’s largest integrated agro-industry businesses, announced this week that its US$16.3 million animal feed plant in Cambodia is 95 percent complete. The plant, 12 kilometers from Phnom Penh, will initially produce 12,000 tonnes of animal feed per year, but that number ...
Villagers Protest Gov’t Plans To Turn Farmland Into SEZ
About 50 people protested in front of Pailin Provincial Hall yesterday against a government plan to turn their farmland in Sala Krao district into a special economic zone (SEZ), villagers and officials said. “It is the villagers that abuse the government land. They took the ...
Police to ‘monitor’ activists
Kampong Thom province Police and soldiers have been deployed to Prey Lang forest to monitor the activities of about 500 villagers patrolling for illegal loggers, a police official said yesterday. The police and military officers gathered along a road leading to the CRCK rubber company, which has ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012032755262/National-news/police-to-monitor-activists.html
Prey Lang villagers on patrol
Kampong Thom province About 500 frustrated villagers, citing the authorities’ inaction as their motivation, rode some 250 motorbikes into Prey Lang forest over the weekend in yet another effort to combat illegal logging they say is decimating the area. The villagers from four provinces surrounding Prey Lang ...
Violence in Land Disputes Up, Rights Group Says
A total of 36 protests involving economic land concessions ended with violent intervention from armed authorities last year, according to data released this week by local rights group Adhoc. More than a fifth of the cases involved the long-simmering Boeng Kak lake evictions, in which ...
The great land giveaway
More than 2 million of the Kingdom’s nearly 18 million hectares of land – roughly 12 per cent – was given out to 225 private companies in economic concessions last year, according to an annual report released by rights group Adhoc yesterday. The concessions put 606 ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012032355211/National-news/the-great-land-giveaway.html
Cambodia Surges Full-Speed Ahead With Land Concessions
The government has already granted roughly 300,000 hectares in economic land concessions (ELC) so far this year, according to data released by a local rights group yesterday. The figure, which amounts to 40 percent of the total land concessions granted in all of 2011, has ...
Kompong Cham Pepper Enjoys Healthy Trade in Thailand
Though less well-known than Kampot pepper, the price of Kompong Cham province pepper has increased by 44 percent from last year and is developing a following in Thailand, farmers and vendors said. With a total of 906 hectares of land dedicated to cultivating pepper in Kompong ...
Imports Fill the Gap as Domestic Silk Production Dwindles
Cambodia is importing hundreds of tons of silk from China and Vietnam to compensate for a fast-declining domestic industry, which is suffering due to producers opting to grow other crops instead or raising silk worms, according to silk producers. Men Sinoeun, director of the Artisans’ Association ...
New year ringing in myriad concessions
The government has granted private companies the right to develop about 65,000 hectares of land in wildlife sanctuaries, national parks and on public reserves since January 1, data from a human rights group reveals. Ouch Leng, land reform project coordinator for the Cambodian Center for Human ...
23,000 Hectares of Land Concessions Approved
The government last month granted four companies a total 23,000 hectares of land concessions for agro-industry projects and a special economic zone (SEZ), according to human rights groups, which said it obtained the information from government documents. An additional 500 hectares inside a wildlife sanctuary were ...
Drought woes for Kampong Thom farmers
Agricultural officials and farmers in Kampong Thom province are increasingly worried about the adverse effect that a severe drought is having on more than 200 hectares of rice crops. director of the provincial agricultural department, told the Post yesterday that due to an unusually low amount ...