Agricultural commodities, processing and products

Cambodia’s Soma Group and Thailand’s C.P. Intertrade on Thursday signed a joint-venture agreement to build a sophisticated rice milling and refining factory in the western Kampong Speu province of Cambodia. The deal was inked between Sok Puthyvuth, chief executive officer of Soma Group, and Prasit Damrongchietanon, ...

Pailin province’s $5 million animal-feed processing plant and warehouse is to finish construction in the next three months and it is a welcomed development for the local farming community. The plant’s owner, Chea Kea, who also owns Diamond Crown casino on the border with Thailand in ...

Lagging demand from foreign buyers has led to Cambodian rice being stockpiled at the country’s mills, according to the head of the country’s peak rice body. Sok Puthyvuth, president of the Cambodia Rice Federation (CRF), said that with exporters receiving fewer orders, the country’s larger rice ...

A high-level agricultural official in Kampong Speu province has been charged with stealing thousands of dollars from paddy rice farmers after promising to deliver them land titles in January 2013, a rights group representative and a court prosecutor said yesterday. Cher Pich, 44, deputy director of ...

Villagers in Koh Kong’s Botum Sakor district said Friday that Union Development Group (UDG) used military forces to prevent villagers from planting paddy rice on land that is locked in a longstanding dispute, a claim the military denied. Khun Thala, a 40-year-old villager, said Friday that ...

Italy plans to lobby the European Union to halt duty-free imports of rice from Cambodia to protect local rice growers and millers, an industry source says. In a report Thursday, oryza.com said Italy was preparing to submit a report to Brussels saying that Cambodian rice was ...

Cambodia’s salt production rose sharply at the end of this year’s harvest season thanks to more favourable weather conditions enhancing yields. Salt production in Kampot and Kep provinces – home to Cambodia’s salt fields – reached 147,000 tonnes this year, nearly double the 80,000 tonnes recorded ...

In December 2011, the managing director of Megagreen Imex Cambodia, Renne Outh, proudly announced that his firm had inked a $21 million deal to be the first to ship Cambodian rice to the Philippines. Nearly two and a half years on, not a single Cambodian grain ...

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated Cambodia’s 2014 rice exports to increase slightly to 1.2 million tons over that in 2013 due to increased production. The FAO reports that its exports estimate includes unofficial exports of milled as well as paddy rice ...

The rice industry’s quest for greater quality at lower cost reached a dead end yesterday at a conference in Phnom Penh, with exporters and farmers polarised on how to achieve greater returns for the industry. The workshop, titled “Improving Rice Value Chain and Enhancing Farmers’ Livelihoods”, ...

Rice exports to Thailand plummeted in the first four months of the year as a result of that country’s surplus, which reached record levels at the end of 2013. Between January and April, Cambodia exported just 1,550 tonnes of rice to Thailand, down 89 per cent ...

The price of durian from Thailand has risen sharply this year, leading to shrinking profits for fruit vendors in Phnom Penh as demand from China for the spiky, pungent fruit grows more robust. On Sihanouk Boulevard, fruit vendor Heng Sovanna said that since March, the price ...

Japanese petroleum company Idemitsu Oil & Gas is considering building a biomass plant in Battambang province to use cassava to produce fuel, a Cambodia Mine Action Centre (CMAC) official says. Leng Chreang, director of mine risk education at CMAC, said the Japanese firm is one year ...

A representative of villagers involved in a land dispute in Mondolkiri province appealed to the government Tuesday to address their displacement after their shelters were destroyed by police and soldiers in a forced eviction Monday. Chan Rithy stood outside the National Assembly in Phnom Penh on ...

This season’s Kampot pepper production is expected to reach 27 tonnes, up from 21 tonnes last year thanks to a larger area of harvested land. But Nguon Lay, president of the Kampot Pepper Association, said on Sunday that despite the increase, adverse weather conditions meant the ...

Cambodia had exported 213,530 tons of fresh and dry cassava in the first three months of 2014, down 13 percent compared with 245,440 tons over the same period last year, according to the figures provided by the Commerce Ministry on Sunday. However, the country saw a ...

Officials from the Ministry of Agriculture have called on farmers to cease using chemical pesticides and adopt environmentally friendly methods in an effort to increase yields and reduce damage to produce. At an agriculture workshop on biological control agents hosted yesterday by the Ministry of Agriculture, ...

The newly-formed Cambodia Rice Federation (CRF), a body that aims to unite the rice sector under one representative body in the country, just elected its first chairman and he happens to be the son of Cambodia’s deputy prime minister. He is also the CEO of ...

The Swift Rubber Company demolished three homes in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Chum district last week without compensation, telling about 120 families to leave immediately or face the destruction of more houses, according to villagers and rights group Adhoc. ...

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 ...

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 ...