Agriculture and fishing

More than 100 villagers from Svay Rieng province’s Romeas Hek district protested yesterday on land they say was stolen from them in 2007 and recently cleared by a former community representative, whose uncle is a local commune chief Villagers said lang Hai, who acted as ...

Commune and village officials in Kratie province yesterday threatened to shut down a community meeting on the protection of Prey Long forest because the organizers had failed to get permission and allegedly invited only opposition party activists. The authorities eventually allowed the meeting to proceed, after ...

High production costs and a lack of government assistance is keeping rice farmers near the poverty line despite unprecedented growth in the sector, according to a new study released by local microfinance institution Intean Poalroath Rongroeurng (IPR). The independent study, conducted by two Cambodian researchers ...

Stevia Nutra Corporation, a Canadian agro-business company, has announced its decision to grow stevia in Cambodia’s Kampong Speu province. The company will grow the plant, whose leaves are used as a sweetener or sugar substitute, on just over 20 hectares of land close to Phnom Penh. Stevia Nutra has incorporated Mighty MekongAgro Industries Co. Ltd, ...

The growth prospects of the Cambodian economy in 2012 remain moderate, as has been expected. Cambodia’s real Gross Domestic Product (GOP) is estimated to grow at a rate of 6.2 percent year-on-year, which is unchanged from our estimation at the beginning of this year. Persistently weaker demand in the European and US markets remain the ...

While the Kingdom’s biggest industrial pig farming company is seeing steady growth as the nation’s population and hunger for pork grows, small pig farmers are having a hard time of it in the face of fluctuating prices and lower cost imports from Thailand, according to experts and insiders who came to a recent ...

More than 200 people in Cambodia’s eastern Svay Rieng province were hospitalized after eating imported vegetables from Vietnam that were not properly washed or cooked, the French-based Pasteur Institute of Cambodia has confirmed after running tests. The case has highlighted an already acknowledged need for more domestic vegetable production and less dependency on imported produce. The ...

Report from tourism ministry said: in 2011, it gained 2.8 million tourist arrivals and harvested for 1.9 billion US dollars. For fourth months of 2012, we received over 1, 272,514 foreign tourists, an increase of over 27 percent if comparing the same period of last year. Tourism industry offered direct jobs of 350,000. Ministry urged to ...

The government on Friday denied it had violated a moratorium on granting new land concessions when Prime Minister Hun Sen signed off on more than 20,000 hectares of land to three rubber companies 11 days after the ban was announced on May 7. According to documents ...

Shukaku, a company owned by a CPP Senator was given a 99-year lease to to the area in 2007.  Immediately, the company started filling in the lake with sand and began kicking out thousands of families in what is one of the most notorious evictions ...

According to documents published in the latest Royal Gazette, Prime Minister Hun Sen signed off on three land concessions covering more than 20,000 hectares last month, 11 days after a moratorium on the granting of such concessions was announced. On May 7, Mr. Hun Sen signed ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen made a bold pledge to the hundreds of thousands of Cambodian villagers fighting companies for their homes yesterday, ordering that in every economic land concession across the country, space must be provided for those they would displace. But last month’s royal book ...

Revenues generated from rubber exports dropped 25 percent to $41 million in the first four months of the year compared to the same period in 2011, as rubber prices on the international market plummeted, according to data released yesterday by the Ministry of Commerce. While rubber ...

A biofuel company is currently under investigation for fraud in the U.K. after millions of dollars of investors’ money was spent on a jatropha plantation in Banteay Meanchey province that never produced even a single drop of biodiesel. The company, London-based Sustainable Agro Energy PLC, had ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Thursday gave authorities six months to end a spate of land disputes pitting developers against villagers that have sparked increasingly violent protests. Hun Sen ordered officials to visit contested areas and issue deeds to families facing illegal evictions, a move ...

The case of the 13 imprisoned Boeung Kak women is in the hands of the Appeal Court now, the women’s defence lawyer said yesterday. Lawyer Harm Sunrith said that Phnom Penh Municipal Court had sent the case to the Appeal Court on Tuesday, adding that he ...

Large quantities of cheap green bean exports from Thailand are driving down prices of the product in Kompong Cham province by as much as 40 percent compared to the same period last year and forcing farmers to grow other crops, officials and farmers said yesterday. The ...

Seventeen villagers from Banteay Meanchey province’s O’Chrou district filed a complaint yesterday with the rights group Adhoc after their homes were allegedly unlawfully bulldozed in June last year. ...

The Koh Kong Provincial Court summonsed 23 villagers from Chikor Leu commune to present themselves – and any relevant documents – at a July 12 hearing with representatives of the two sugar companies that bulldozed their farmland and evicted them from their homes in 2006. ...

Sixteen ethnic minority families in Ratanakkiri province have claimed that they are being forced from their land after a commune chief signed it away, and that commune borders have been redrawn to dispossess them. On Friday, the families, who have been living on 30 hectares of ...

Milled-rice exporters have called on the government to continue its efforts in reducing electricity and transportation costs, two of the main obstacles facing the government’s goal of exporting 1 million tonnes of milled rice by 2015. At a working group on rice exports on Friday, 40 ...

One and a half million children still toil as laborers in Cambodia’s fisheries, brick factories, agricultural plantations and construction sites, government officials said yesterday at an event held at Phnom Penh’s Wat Botum ahead of World Day Against Child Labor on Tuesday. The government has set ...

After years of poor yields, the cricket farmers of Kompong Thom province have more than tripled their average catch compared with the same time last year due to early rains, an agriculture official said yesterday. Ou Bunsophoan, director of the Kompong Thom provincial agriculture department, said ...

More than 1,000 people marched in Sihanoukville yesterday to raise awareness of the exploitation of child labour, said rights workers. Kong Socheat, child rights advocacy co-ordinator for Licadho, said the province had been chosen for its high rate of child labour, especially in the fishing sector ...