Agriculture

A Cambodian opposition leader, [Mu Sochua], has urged the federal government to stop Australian companies from accepting land concessions in Cambodia, saying they are contributing to a pressing humanitarian crisis displacing up to one million people. ...

Farm mechanization is steadily on the rise, with the number of tractors and power tillers in the country nearly doubling to more than 67,000 between 2008 and 2011, according to figures released by the Ministry of Agriculture this week. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday told senior officials to stop investors from using land concessions as a pretext for logging and to discuss the possibility of reducing the amount of time such concessions can last. The government placed a moratorium on logging concessions in 2002 to ...

About 70 villagers in Pursat province’s Krakor district held a daylong prayer ceremony yesterday to request help from spirits to curse the powerful Pheapimex company for destroying their farmland, villagers said. Pheapimex, owned by the wife of CPP Senator Lao Meng Khin, has maintained a 316,000-hectare ...

Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen announced plans Thursday to encourage rubber smallholdings in a bid to expand production as the country promotes the cash crop as the number two commodity after rice. Hun Sen said the government will support not only large-scale rubber plantations but also ...

Cambodian rubber exports declined 3 per cent year-on-year during the first two months of 2012, according to figures from the Ministry of Commerce. The value of the exports fell by nearly a third. ...

Despite a slow start for milled-rice exports in 2012 brought on by falling regional prices, officials yesterday predicted Cambodian shipments would more than double to 400,000 tonnes this year. Tax exemptions from Europe, which boosted milled-rice exports to about 173,000 tonnes last year, would continue to ...

Rice production grew by 6.42 percent last year, despite vast tracts of paddy being devastated by flooding, according to figures released yesterday by the Ministry of Agriculture. In the 2011 to 2012 season, 8.78 million tons of rice were harvested from 2.78 million hectares of ...

Provincial authorities released land protester Bun Ratha, who was detained on Friday and sent to Kratie prison, after his supporters blocked traffic on National Road 73 yesterday. More than 500 villagers from Chhlong district’s Kampong Damrei commune, who are in a dispute with rubber company Kasotim ...

About 150 villagers embroiled in a long-running land dispute with CPP Senator and tycoon Ly Yong Phat protested peacefully outside the Kompong Speu Provincial Court yesterday as five villagers were questioned over accusations that they are illegally occupying the senator’s land. The villagers, from Thpong district’s ...

An across-the-board trade and investment deal signed with China’s Yunnan province on Friday was a jump-start to Chinese President Hu Jintao’s pledge a week earlier to double bilateral trade with the Kingdom to US$5 billion by 2017. The package signing, which brought a delegation of 45 ...

A Chinese company from Yunnan province will invest $100 million to build a rice mill and processing plant in Cambodia with a local firm and export 200,000 tons of milled rice to China beginning this year, officials said yesterday. The Yunnan Pan-Asia Agricultural Cooperation and Development ...

About 100 residents of Kampong Speu’s Omlaing commune will accompany five fellow villagers to the provincial court today after  receiving summonses last week. ...

Revenues earned by the Sihanouk Autonomous Port for the first quarter of this year jumped 22 per cent year-on-year to US$8.3 million, according to figures released yesterday by SAP. Exports of the Kingdom’s rice, garments and timber, coupled with imports of textiles, electronics and construction materials, ...

Cambodia cassava exports to Thailand resumed yesterday along the Banteay Meanchey province border after Thai commerce officials agreed to expedite the granting of licenses that had prevented 1,600 tons of cassava from entering Thailand, officials and exporters said. The cassava, which had been stuck in trucks ...

The Ministry of Commerce is setting up a National Confederation for Rice Exporters to achieve Prime Minister Hun Sen’s target of exporting 1 million tons of milled rice by 2015. ...

More than 1,600 tons of cassava have been stuck at the Thai-Cambodian border in Banteay Meanchey for several days because Thai officials have banned imports of the crop in an effort to support domestic prices at home, officials and exporters said yesterday. The cassava, 800 tons ...

Two hundred tons of unmilled rice slated for export to Vietnam was destroyed in a warehouse fire in Kandal province’s Ang Snuol district early yesterday morning ...

Kampong Speu provincial court issued summonses yesterday to five villagers from Thpong district’s Omlaing commune, who are involved in a long-standing land dispute with Cambodia People’s Party senator Ly Yong Phat’s Phnom Penh Sugar company. ...

About 300 people from six villages in Pursat province’s Kbal Trach commune protested yesterday outside Pheapimex Group’s Krakor district office, the latest confrontation in a land dispute that stretches back 13 years. Villager representative Duok Sary said they had come to demand that the company ...

Cambodia’s Prominence Investment Enterprise and Thailand’s Panpee Group have signed an agreement to supply China’s Yunnan Rubber Co Ltd with 500,000 tonnes, or US$2 billion worth, of rubber per year, Sam Kay, general manager of the local partner, said yesterday. ...

About 300 villagers in Pursat province’s Krakor district yesterday protested to stop the powerful Pheapimex Company from clearing their farmland after armed military police arrived in the area to guard the firm’s government-awarded land concession, villagers said. The company used two excavators and nine bulldozers to ...

Kratie provincial authorities met with more than 500 Pi Thnou commune families seeking a social land concession yesterday, making good on a promise made last week in order to get villagers to end their blocking of national road 6A. ...

Cambodia had made its first direct shipment of rice to China, an official revealed yesterday, but the test run, which was hoped to open the vast Chinese rice market to local exporters, was largely unsuccessful. Golden Rice Co Ltd shipped 48 tonnes of milled rice to ...