Agriculture

If the government continues to grant economic land and mining concessions at the current rate, there will be no more arable land left in the country to give away within one year, a researcher from the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights said yesterday. Pointing to the ...

Representatives of more than 300 families in Battambang province’s Bavel district yesterday urged government officials to intervene in a land dispute with provincial authorities and a businessman. Representative Thuy Ry said the 305 families had lived on the 3,638 hectares of land in Ampil Pram Doeum ...

Agriculture Minister Chan Sarun said yesterday that Cambodia currently produces only half as many vegetables as it needs to meet demand and that more needs to be done to remedy the situation. “Cambodia only produces 40 to 60 perent of its needs and imports, the ...

Representatives from five communes in Koh Kong province are scheduled to hold a press conference in the capital today, appealing for government intervention in a land dispute with a Chinese development company that has spanned nearly four years. Lov Hov, a representative from Thmar Sar commune, ...

Rocks were hurled, fires lit, hostages taken and the message delivered in no uncertain terms last week: Cambodians are increasingly willing to use violence against companies that intimidate them or ignore their demands. Twice – in Svay Rieng and Kampong Cham provinces – garment workers pelted ...

Pailin’s juicy longans, a small beige-colored fruit renowned for its sweet taste, is on the way to becoming Cambodia’s third food product to attain Geographic Indicator (GI) status. The longan will join Cambodia’s only other GI-recognized food products: Kompong Speu palm sugar and Kampot ...

Villagers being questioned in relation to a land dispute with a powerful company said on Friday that a Ratanakiri court official had intimidated them by urging them to accept an out-of-court settlement with the firm or face a countersuit. Court officials denied the claims and said ...

Two days after Ratanakiri province villagers took hostage a group of local officials who were clearing land for a rubber plantation, authorities downplayed the incident, saying they had no plans to press charges and that “the problem has been settled.” A representative of the rubber company, ...

Ethnic minority Tumpoun villagers yesterday delivered a thumb-printed petition to commune, district and provincial authorities in Ratanakkiri demanding intervention in a Lumphat district land dispute after villagers held five rubber plantation company employees hostage on Tuesday. Five employees of Jing Zhong Ri Cambodia Co Ltd were ...

Garment-making has been a mainstay of Cambodia’s fledgling economy, chalking up between 6 and 7 percent annually for the past four years. But, the country is turning its focus back to the land in the hope that rice growing and other farming produce, will lift growth ...

For 53-year-old farmer Ros Mao, it’s not just the early bird that catches the worm. The Takeo province farmer has raised millions of earthworms for eight years in Tram Trak district, selling the slimy red creatures and using the manure they create to grow his ...

Child labour was draining the Kingdom’s brainpower and adversely affecting 750,000 of its children, officials at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said yesterday. Speaking at a three-day conference on child agricultural labour, Kaing Khim, deputy director-general of fisheries administration at the MAFF, said ...

Investment in Cambodian rubber plantations increased by 255 per cent in 2011 on rising global demand for the commodity. There were 20 new projects worth US$675 million in the Kingdom last year, according to data from the Council for the Development of Cambodia. There were nine ...

The bilateral relations between Cambodia and China in terms of investment, trade and tourism have become stronger in the past year thanks to the two countries’ good relations, said officials Friday. Cambodia attracted China’s investments of 1.19 billion U.S. dollars in 2011, up 71 percent from ...

Thai cassava farmers have asked Cambodia to stop exporting the commodity into Thailand in an attempt to keep prices high and avoid saturating the market, officials said yesterday. Sao Sarat, Pailin provincial cabinet chief, said that Thai government officials representing local cassava farmers met with Pailin ...

The US government is working with a Cambodian microfinance institution to finance $2.7million in loans to farmers and small- and medium-sized agro-businesses in Battambang, Kompong Thom, Pursat and Siem Reap provinces in order to improve their access to credit, the US Embassy said. USAid will work ...

Dry-season rice farmers in some areas west of the Tonle Sap River and in eastern provinces are appealing to the government for help as the reservoirs they rely on for irrigation are drying up faster than usual, farmers and officials said yesterday. Officials at the ministries ...

More than 300 villagers from two districts in Kampong Speu province joined forces yesterday to protest in front of the provincial court over two land disputes, vowing to continue until authorities resolved them and released a mother of seven jailed last month after she had ...

Human rights group Licadho raised the alarm yesterday over the increased use of armed force by authorities as they seek to suppress protests over Cambodia’s numerous land disputes. It noted that during the past two months, security forces have opened fire on villagers during three ...

Despite a 67 per cent drop in food imports to Cambodia in 2011, inflation in exporting countries drove an 18 per cent rise in the total value of the imports. Food imports fell from 769,993 tonnes in 2010 to 254,080 in 2011, while the total value ...

An 11-year-old HIV-positive girl evicted from Borei Keila moved back to Phnom Penh to live with her aunt because she had no access to medication at her relocation site in Kandal province, she said yesterday. During another day of protests outside the National Assembly, schoolgirl Theng ...

Pig prices in Cambodia have fallen by 18 percent in the past three months due to a massive oversupply of pork in the country, an official at the Cambodian Pig Raisers Association said yesterday. The reason for the oversupply is twofold: Thailand increased its pig exports ...

Dramatic new video footage of the January 18 Kratie province land dispute shooting has been released on the internet, depicting TTY rubber company security guards opening fire on a crowd of unarmed villagers. The 48-second video, recorded by a villager on a mobile phone and uploaded ...

Plans for a 5,000-hectare banana farming project in Koh Kong province, proposed last year by an Australian and a Japanese company, look set to go ahead, with state news agency Agence Kampuchea Presse (AKP) yesterday reporting that the project would cost $50 million. Last Friday, the ...