Agriculture

Ministry officials were silent yesterday on how exactly they planned to implement Prime Minister Hun Sen’s suspension of any new economic land concession grants and review of existing ELCs. Provincial authorities involved in granting the now-suspended land concessions yesterday said they were ready to implement ...

Displaced villagers from two Phnom Penh neighborhoods on Wednesday submitted a petition to the UN’s human rights envoy, who is in Cambodia on a routine fact-finding mission. The envoy, Surya Subedi, was visiting the Phnom Penh eviction site of Borei Keila ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen has issued an immediate and indefinite moratorium on the granting of new economic land concessions and called for a review of all existing concessions, a regulation signed by the premier yesterday states. Dated to an April 27 Council of Ministers’ meeting, the ...

The Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture (Cedac) said yesterday that it was undertaking measures to change its status from an NGO to a cooperative, a move that will ease the organization of donor money and push it to become more profit orientated ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday issued a moratorium on economic land concessions, temporarily halting a long-standing policy of granting land to private companies and those with powerful political connections that has sparked growing concerns from national and international human rights groups. The prime minister’s announcement comes ...

The Cambodia representative for the world’s largest shipping company said exports from Cambodia to Europe grew by more than 60 per cent during 2011, but have since weakened. “Rice exports grew a lot during 2011 and a lot of it went to Poland and France,” ...

Cambodia’s government, facing growing protests by villagers and warnings about disappearing wilderness, suspended the granting of land to domestic and foreign companies on Monday in a move to curb forced evictions and illegal logging. Rights groups in the impoverished but resource-rich Southeast Asian country said the ...

The U.N.’s human rights envoy to Cambodia, Surya Subedi, was in Ratanakkiri province yesterday as part of his weeklong visit to the country to investigate the impact land concessions have on local communities. Some rights groups have singled out land concessions as the premier human rights ...

Loran Import-Export Co Ltd, Cambodia’s largest milled-rice exporter, is scheduled to start construction on a new rice mill this month worth more than US$2 million, according to the company’s General Director Lim Bunheng. The mill will help reduce the flow of Cambodia’s paddy rice into neighbouring ...

About 500 families from three communes in Siem Reap province’s Chi Kraeng district are seeking the prime minister’s intervention in a dispute with a rubber company over 1,000 hectares of land. Siem Reap provincial governor Chan Sophal said on Wednesday that Cambodian People’s Party lawmaker Seang ...

In what is becoming an increasingly popular – and coordinated – protest tactic among Phnom Penh’s dispossessed, several women took off their shirts and bras during a demonstration over land rights that briefly turned violent near the World Bank yesterday. About 100 protesters, most of them ...

The “company” that military police have declined to identify but said sent staff to confront activist Chut Wutty shortly before he was shot last Thursday is Timbergreen, a firm the slain activist had attempted to expose for illegal logging. Documents obtained by the Post yesterday and sources have ...

Export to Vietnam climbed more than 57 per cent year on year in the first quarter of 2012 as farmers looked for alternative destinations for products that went to Thailand last year. The primarily agricultural exports to Cambodia’s eastern neighbour were worth US$201.5 million, up from ...

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights yesterday called on the government to ensure its investigation into the deaths of forestry activist Chut Wutty and military police officer In Rattana remained independent, and raised concern over an apparent increase in attacks on ...

Agricultural experts are urging Cambodian rice growers to choose seeds that can withstand drought and submersion in deep water in an attempt to make the country’s rice industry more competitive. Awareness of rice-seed selection was limited among farmers in the Kingdom, despite the importance of the ...

Investors in Cambodia’s northeast on Monday announced an investment in a cassava-processing plant in Battambang province. Prak Phoung Kesoa, assistant CEO at Battambang Agro-Industry, said yesterday that the plant would be 100 per cent Cambodian owned ...

In an effort to make up for the low salt yield this year caused by unexpected rainfall during the dry season, farmers in salt-producing Kep and Kampot provinces said yesterday that they would try to continue harvesting the mineral for another month even though the ...

Amid mounting calls for further investigation, officials said yesterday they were establishing a task force to look into the death of outspoken forestry activist Chut Wutty, while the family of the military police officer who allegedly killed Chut Wutty before turning the gun on himself ...

Deep in Koh Kong’s forested district on Thursday, Chut Wutty, 46, the founder of the Natural Resource Protection Group, and In Rattana, 32, a military police officer, were shot dead. Chut Wutty, a forestry activist who has dedicated himself to preserving Cambodia’s disappearing forests since ...

The military police officer who killed well-known anti-logging campaigner Chut Wutty, 46, on Thursday in Koh Kong province then died by his own hand after turning his AK-47 assault rifle on himself in an apparent act of instant suicide following the slaying of the forestry ...

The government needs to enforce legislation on protecting the environment, even as it gives away masses of land and resources in concessions, or risk jeopardising its economic future, the UN assistant secretary-general for disaster risk reduction said yesterday. “The most critical impact of disasters today is ...

Cambodia has made real progress in decreasing cases of malaria – already surpassing the Millennium Development Goal for malaria four years ahead of the 2015 target – but certain communities still face major challenges in combating the disease, officials said yesterday on World Malaria Day. Although ...

As the end of this year’s cashew harvest nears, the yield in two major producing provinces has fallen compared with last year, officials and farmers said, while traders said that the price of the nuts had also dropped since last year. In Kompong Cham province, this ...

The tonnage of the Kingdom’s milled-rice exports jumped nearly 50 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter, according to the Ministry of Commerce, with export revenues soaring as much as 82 per cent. Total exports of milled rice for the first three months of 2012 hit ...