Agriculture

Three ethnic minority communities in Mondolkiri province’s Pech Chreada district are drafting a petition to send to provincial authorities in an attempt to resolve a land dispute in which part of their communal land has been granted to other communities and private landowners. In June, officials ...

Some 9.5 million Cambodians who directly engage in agriculture must adopt new techniques in order to counter dynamic weather patterns caused by climate change, and the government must work with farmers to ensure that it happens, an agricultural conference was told last week. Flown in from ...

More than 150 families from Koh Kong’s Botum Sakor district were confronted by authorities when they staged a protest on Monday demanding compensation from agro-industrial giant Sinimexim Investment Co Ltd for bulldozing their plantation land. District Governor On Phearak said authorities had to intervene to uphold ...

Environmental groups and a local community leader in Stung Treng province have called for a nationwide boycott of the popular Angkor Beer brand to protest the beverage company’s links to a controversial hydro­power dam to be built in Laos. Laos announced earlier this month that it ...

Forestry Administration officials on Friday confiscated 1,000 pieces of luxury wood on land belonging to a Vietnamese rubber company that has been repeatedly accused of illegal logging in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district, local officials and human rights workers said Sunday. Romash Svat, a representative of some ...

Accelerating the mapping and titling of rural farmland should be an “urgent” priority of the government and civil society, particularly when it comes to protecting indigenous peoples’ and women’s rights, Oxfam representatives said yesterday. The remarks followed the release of an EU-funded survey of rural communities’ ...

Flooding has affected close to 287,000 hectares of rice fields, with about 27,800 considered damaged beyond repair, according to government statistics released on Monday. The data from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries reveal that rising waters have affected about 11 per cent of the ...

The Export-Import Bank of China (Exim Bank) on Wednesday signed up to provide a concessional loan of $121 million to Cambodia for irrigation system and power transmission line development. The agreement was inked between Cambodian Finance Minister Aun Porn Moniroth and visiting Chairman of the Exim ...

The coming cassava harvest is increasingly threatened by flooding as about 25 per cent of the crop in prime growing provinces is or has been submerged, according to authorities. Taking up more cultivated area than any other crop in Cambodia except for rice, cassava is especially ...

With pant legs rolled up to his knees, Hoeuy Mon trudges through a brown and green patchwork of rice fields. His four hectares are in Tkov village, Prey Veng province, about 300 metres from his home. On most of the journey, walkways enclosing each square plot ...

Cambodia’s rice exports roughly doubled in the first nine months of this year compared with the same period in 2012, according to government data released yesterday. But the figures aren’t big enough to meet official goals for 2013. The numbers show that exports of fragrant rice ...

Amidst an opposition boycott of the National Assembly, CNRP leaders on Sunday announced to about 10,000 supporters gathered in Phnom Penh their tentative plans to push the one-party CPP government to investigate irregularities in the July election and enact a broad slate of reforms. As patchy ...

Cambodia’s production of paddy rice is forecast at about 9.3 million tonnes this year, unchanged from last year’s estimate but up from 8.8 million tonnes in 2011, the Food and Agriculture Organisation said Thursday. In its latest quarterly Crop Prospects and Food Situation report, the UN ...

Energy demand in Southeast Asia is expected to increase by more than 80 per cent by 2035, fuelling some $240 billion in oil spending, a new report from the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) shows. In its “Southeast Asia Energy Outlook” published yesterday, the Paris-based IAEA ...

In Cambodia, there is talk of change. Not just from Hun Sen, the prime minister, who has promised reforms after his party suffered a significant blow in recent elections, but from environmental activists and campaigners, who say there has never before been such an opportunity ...

Land covering an area the size of Italy has been taken from indigenous communities around the world by suppliers to the biggest names in the food and drinks industry, according to a major new report. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are among the companies criticised by Oxfam for ...

Vietnam Dairy Products Joint-Stock Co., the nation’s largest dairy producer, is building a milk factory in Cambodia as it plans a global expansion to more than double annual revenue to $3 billion by 2017. The company known as Vinamilk is opening a plant in the capital ...

Activists are skeptical that Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen will follow through on a pledge to stop a contentious practice of appropriating rural land for commercial use, an issue that hurt the leader and his party in elections in July. In its new five-year political platform ...

Preparing for a demonstration expected to draw thousands of garment workers this morning, Ath Thorn, president of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers Democratic Union (C.CAWDU), said yesterday that he feared the possibility of a heavy-handed military police response. About 4,000 workers gathered at SL ...

Cambodia had exported 288,300 tons of fresh and dry cassava in the first eight months of the year, down 56 percent compared with same period last year, the figures of the Commerce Ministry said Sunday. The country generated total revenue of 15.2 million U.S. dollars from ...

Cambodia has reported a 45 percent increase in dry rubber exports in the first eight months of the year, the figures of the Ministry of Commerce showed Saturday. From January to August this year, the country had exported 45, 530 tons of dry rubber, up 45 ...

With the long-ruling CPP sworn in to govern for another five years despite the opposition CNRP abstaining from sitting in the National Assembly due to election irregularities, a new report argues that imminent threats to Cam­bodia’s future development can only be overcome with significant government ...

Following a high-level meeting yesterday, Cambodia National Rescue Party leader Sam Rainsy said that his party would seek to restart negotiations with the ruling party and possibly join the government. The move marks an apparent about-turn from a party press conference held on Wednesday when Rainsy ...

The government’s latest five-year strategy calls for a complete halt to economic land concessions (ELCs) and an inquiry into those still in the pipeline. But the plan has drawn scepticism from conservationists and rights groups, who pointed out that loopholes have been liberally applied after the ...