Agriculture

The newly formed Cambodia Rice Federation (CRF), an organisation aimed at uniting the entire rice sector under one representative body, will be headed by Sok Puthyvuth, son of Deputy Prime Minister Sok An. Puthyvuth, who is also CEO of SOMA Group, a multifaceted business that includes ...

In a first for the Kingdom’s organic rice, the Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture (CEDAC), successfully exported its produce to Hong Kong earlier this month, the organisation’s top official confirmed yesterday. ...

Cambodia’s steadily declining rubber prices have hit critically low levels that are destined to only get worse as Thailand prepares to offload huge rubber stocks, the secretary-general of the Association for Rubber Development of Cambodia said Thursday. As the price of natural rubber has paralleled a ...

The amount of land used to grow longans has doubled in the past two years, but a lack of supply-chain infrastructure is hampering farmers’ ability to get top dollar for their product, the fruit’s body says. Sreng Sreang, deputy director of the Pailin Longan Farmers’ Community ...

Sexual assault and the annihilation of sacred graveyards are among the many claims levelled at Vietnamese Rubber giant Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) by villagers in Ratanakkiri province, a report by the World Bank’s investment arm reveals. In February, 17 indigenous communities that accused HAGL of ...

Prime Minister of Cambodia Hun Sen is expected to pay a 3-day official visit to Dhaka from Friday to further expanding and strengthening trade relations and cooperation in agriculture sector between the two countries. During the visit, sources said Dhaka is expected to seek long-term ...

T Mohan, a Malaysian publisher and businessman arrested in the 1990s for attempting to extort a casino executive, is back in Cambodia’s newspaper market. The Khmer Times, the latest English-language news offering from Mr. Mohan, hit newsstands earlier this month, with a government spokesman even resigning ...

The government has issued a total of 3.4 million land titles across the country, 500,000 of them since a renewed push personally orchestrated by Prime Minister Hun Sen, according to new figures released by the Land Management Ministry. In a notice posted to its website Friday, ...

Nearly 200 villagers from Kratie province gathered in Phnom Penh Monday, hoping to deliver a petition to the Cambodian Senate and other government agencies in protest of a rubber company’s development there. The villagers, from Snoul district, say a Vietnamese rubber company began developing in ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen’s 2012 ban on the allocation of economic land concessions was supposed to halt the unpopular practice of turning over large swaths of property to developers. And going by the numbers last year, it worked. But in the vacuum, according to local rights ...

Cambodian authorities have charged nearly half as many villagers in land dispute cases in the first three months of this year as they did in all of 2013, a local rights group said Thursday, adding that most of the rows stemmed from government-granted land concessions. Following ...

Despite a large increase in exports during the first quarter, natural rubber producers continue to see declining revenues, as world prices fall further. The latest figures from the Ministry of Commerce show natural rubber exports grew 26 per cent during the first quarter of 2014, compared ...

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 ...

Representatives of a community locked in a land dispute with a Vietnamese company in Kratie province returned home from Phnom Penh late Tuesday after failing to garner support from Prime Minister Hun Sen, while an official at the company said it had begun destroying villagers’ ...

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 ...

Despite flood damage causing reduced production levels, cassava farmers in Pailin province are benefiting from an increase in the purchasing price, provincial department of agriculture officials say. “This year’s harvest dropped to 25 tonnes per hectare from 30 tonnes per hectare last season because of the ...

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 ...