Agriculture and fishing
Crocodile farmers feel bite as demand continues to fall
The price of crocodile hatchlings in Siem Reap province has dropped drastically, and many local farmers are worrying about the future viability of crocodile farming. Tim Bunseng, a crocodile farmer in Siem Reap with around 200 female hatchlings, said the price he can get has dropped ...
As Soldiers Leave Kratie Village, Problems Remain
After a three-day blockade, soldiers pulled out over the weekend from the Kratie province village where a teenage girl was shot dead last week by government security forces, officials said yesterday. However, human rights workers denied a report by a provincial official that freedom of ...
Cambodian, Chinese firms sign co-op MOUs
PHNOM PENH – Cambodian and Chinese firms on Friday signed a number of memorandums of understanding (MOUs) on business cooperation in the fields of agriculture, mineral resources, food, garment, and electronic products. ...
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2012-05/19/content_15337371.htm
Fewer Pig Imports Send Pork Prices Upward
Growing demand for pork on the Thai market since March has lead to an increase in the price of live pigs in Cambodia, as Thai farmers reduce the amount of live pigs exported to Cambodia in order to fuel local demand, officials said yesterday. ...
Cambodia rubber drops 6 per cent
Cambodia’s rubber prices declined almost six per cent in the past two weeks, caused by concern over the European crisis with Greece, industry players and Cambodian officials said yesterday. Men Sopheak, deputy director general of Chop Rubber Plantation, a big rubber exporter in Cambodia, said the ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012051856229/Business/cambodia-rubber-drops-6-per-cent.html
Cambodian Rice Exports Fall Short of Government Hopes
Cambodia’s rice exports in 2012 may fall significantly compared to last year, due to high fuel prices, soaring logistics costs and high prices. According to local sources, Cambodian rice shipments to Europe this month are at a $200 markup per container over those from Thailand and ...
Kratie Demonstration Area Sealed as Police Arrest Leaders
Authorities in Kratie province have denied entry to journalists and rights workers to the site of violent land clashes that led to the death of a teenage girl on Wednesday. Rights workers say they fear for the safety of villagers in Broma village, but police say ...
Cambodian troops seal off village after land clashes
Security forces have sealed off a village in eastern Cambodia and denied entry to human rights workers after the fatal shooting of a teenager in the latest violent eviction aimed at clearing land for development. Soldiers said they needed to secure the area around Proma village, ...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/17/cambodian-troops-land-clashes
Death points up urgency of ELC review
The government needs to act – and act now – to review all economic land concessions, which underscore the Kingdom’s dark disease of violent land disputes, rights groups said yesterday. Ten days after Prime Minister Hun Sen signed a regulation for an immediate and indefinite moratorium ...
Slow outlook for 2012 rice exports
Rapidly increasing logistics costs and low regional rice prices would hinder Cambodia’s rice-export target this year, with one expert saying that milled-rice exports could fall to half of last year’s shipments. The cost of shipping rice to Europe climbed by more than 50 per cent between ...
Rampant Smuggling Hurts Cigarette Industry
An increase in the amount of cigarettes smuggled into Cambodia has forced the country’s largest cigarette manufacturer to scale down production by nearly half, leaving local tobacco farmers with little choice than to sell their crop at a reduced price to Vietnam. According to Tola Ponlu, ...
Cedac to Export Rice to Germany Next Month
The Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture (Cedac) said yesterday it would begin exporting organic rice to Europe in June for the first time as part of a one-year agreement with a German-based equitable trade organization. “We’re looking to break more into the international ...
Men rescued from fishing boat slavery
Two Cambodians were repatriated yesterday after being rescued from a fishing vessel at a port in Senegal on Friday, thanks to collaborative intervention by the International Organization for Migration and Senegalese authorities. Toy Koeun, 29, from Pursat province, and Som Pich, 20, from Kampot province, said ...
Farmers Blame Gold Mines for Cattle Deaths
Villagers in Battambang province’s Phnom Proek district have called on the government to shut down several unlicensed gold mines being blamed for the deaths of cattle that drank from a pond contaminated by chemical runoff. “Three of the village’s cows died and two became sick after ...
Q1 exports to Thailand soar
Cambodia’s exports to Thailand jumped 55 per cent year on year in the first quarter of 2012 on what experts and officials said was a smoother political relationship between the countries, as well as an easing of Thai border regulations. The Kingdom shipped US$85.4 million in ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012051656176/Business/q1-exports-to-thailand-soar.html
TTY to open $6m rice milling plant in 2013
Cambodian-owned TTY corporation will invest US$6 million in a rice milling plant in Kampong Speu province, company officials said yesterday. Heng Sarath, TTY deputy director, said the factory would be built on national road 6, and would mill 20 tonnes of rice per year. Construction is ...
Teenage girl shot dead in Cambodia land protest
Security forces in Cambodia have shot dead a 15-year-old girl who was taking part in a land protest. She was demonstrating against the development of a rubber plantation on farmland in eastern Kratie province. Authorities say local residents, armed with axes and crossbows, would not vacate the ...
Supernatural Forces Enlisted in Land Dispute
Villagers in Kompong Chnang province have resorted to black magic as a means to even the odds with a long-running land dispute with a powerful company, KDC Development, holding a spell-casing ceremony on Saturday to curse the firm and the provincial court for allegedly colluding ...
General concern over settlement
A nearly year-long land dispute in Oddar Meanchey has been resolved for most parties involved by the intervention of two RCAF generals, but critics contend the more than 2,400 hectare-giveaway is a ploy to influence upcoming elections. Generals Kun Kim and Chea Tara yesterday granted 1.5 ...
Cambodia: Police Officers Kill Girl, 15, in Clash With Villagers Over Land
Security forces shot and killed a 15-year-old girl on Wednesday during a clash with about 200 villagers armed with axes and crossbows in eastern Cambodia, in the latest of several violent evictions aimed at clearing land for development. ...
UN urges Cambodia to hold companies to account over land disputes
Companies that have seized land, confiscated livestock and destroyed homes and property have gone unpunished, the UN special rapporteur for Cambodia has said. Surya Subedi, professor of international law at Leeds University, said all the communities he had met raised the issue of misconduct by ...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/may/14/un-cambodia-companies-land-disputes
CEDAC sours on honey prices
CEDAC, a domestic agriculture development organisation and the Kingdom’s largest distributor of natural honey, will shrink its purchases of the commodity in the face of rising prices, the company’s president says. Yang Saing Koma said the group would not reach its goal of buying 7,000 ...
Sieam Bunthy, P. 8
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/business/cedac-sours-honey-prices
Protesters End Roadblock Empty-Handed
Srey ambel district, Koh Kong province – A roadblock by locals in a long-running land dispute with CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat petered out after several hours in the dying rain on Saturday without the protesters winning any concessions from either the senator’s firm or ...
TTY tycoon owes potato debt, villagers say
TTY director-general Na Marady, a well-known Cambodian tycoon, has been accused of owing money to farmers from whom he bought potatoes on credit more than a year ago in Memot district’s Koki and Kompoan communes in Kampong Cham province. The villagers complained on Friday that Na ...