Agriculture

The Ministry of Agriculture has created designated bird flu contamination zones in Phnom Penh and Kandal province following the deaths of hundreds of birds due to the H5N1 virus, officials said Wednesday. Agriculture Minister Ouk Rabon signed two directives late last month saying that poultry being ...

An existing moratorium on economic land concessions should be no impediment to pouring more cash into the Kingdom’s booming, and highly criticised, rubber trade, industry executives in the capital heard yesterday, as many current ELCs can simply be recycled to a new crop of investors. Ly ...

An ad hoc committee comprised of representatives from the European Union, the Ministry of Commerce, provincial administrations and the sugar industry met again yesterday at the ministry’s headquarters to continue its discussion of issues faced by those displaced by sugar plantations. The committee touched upon topics ...

More than 20 families working on a controversial palm oil plantation in Ratanakkiri province owned by the Hoang Anh Lumphat company have filed a complaint with rights group Adhoc accusing the owners of improperly withholding one month’s pay. Lor Sophal said he and another 22 families, ...

The 19 families in Pailin province who were told by police and military police on Saturday to vacate their land filed a complaint with Adhoc on Monday, the provincial coordinator for the NGO said. Authorities told the families to move on Saturday from the 95-hectares they ...

Siam Kubota Corporation Co Ltd is set to expand its business by opening subsidiaries in Cambodia and Laos as part of its preparation for the launch of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in 2015. Siam Kubota has invested a total of Bt68 million in the two ...

More than 60 police and military police informed 19 families farming on a plot of land in Pailin province’s Sala Krao district on Saturday that they would have to move as they were growing crops on state land. However, Prak Sophima, provincial coordinator for rights group ...

Auditors from the Coca-Cola Company visited Oddar Meanchey province on Friday to investigate allegations of land grabbing against sugar plantations that supply the global drinks giant, but called off a community meeting because of a heavy police presence, an NGO said Sunday. Chun Bora of the ...

As buyers swoop in to purchase Thai rice at garage-sale prices, Cambodian exporters are dealing with lower than usual rates, and the results are being felt all the way down the supply chain to the farmers themselves. New figures from rice industry publication Oryza show that ...

Though an occasional mango or pineapple can be spotted on Eung Uy Kheam’s sleepy farm in Kampot province, it’s the 130 durian trees that the fourth-generation farmer calls his cash crop. In Kampot, on Cambodia’s southwest coast, a pilot project led by the provincial Department ...

A Chinese-owned company in Preah Vihear’s Tbeng Mean­chey district stumbled across an 8th-century sandstone carving of the Buddha while excavating land there on Wednesday, the provincial culture department said yesterday. Oug Vireak, a deputy with the culture department, said the firm Lan Feng had been bulldozing ...

The World Bank’s ombudsman office says it will assess a complaint from indigenous groups in Ratanakkiri province that a bank-supported company has damaged the forest and surrounding communities. Seventeen different groups joined in the complaint, claiming the Hoang Anh Gia Lai rubber company, which receives ...

Environment Minister Say Sam Al failed to meet the villagers locked in a long-running land dispute with the Chinese-owned company Union Development Group (UDG) on Wednesday, despite visiting company officials in Koh Kong province, according to a rights worker and a provincial official. Mr. Sam Al ...

Third-party auditors hired by The Coca-Cola Company are conducting an audit of Cambodian sugar suppliers, NGO and community representatives said yesterday. “Coke has commissioned them to conduct an assessment on their suppliers. They will talk to all parties, the community, NGOs and the company,” said Eang ...

The International Finance Corporation’s compliance ombudsman has officially accepted a complaint filed by ethnic minority families in Ratanakkiri province against the IFC for investing in rubber plantations accused of stealing land and clearing forests. In a letter sent to the families on Monday, the ombudsman deems ...

As illegal logging con­tinues to take a toll on the country’s woodlands, civil society groups yesterday called on the government to stay true to its commitment of providing an extra two million hectares of community forest by 2029. During a two-day conference in the capital, participants ...

Seven pre-Angkorian temples have been discovered on two land concessions in Preah Vihear province, but while an Environment Ministry official said Tuesday that the ministry had no knowledge of the temples when they granted the concessions, the Culture Ministry said their existence had long been ...

The Chinese-owned Union Development Group in Koh Kong province is bulldozing swaths of its land concession, originally intended for a massive tourist resort, to plant cassava and palm oil trees instead, a CNRP lawmaker-elect said Monday. Son Chhay, lawmaker-elect and CNRP chief whip, visited the area ...

Four Vietnamese rubber firms are responsible for destroying an estimated 1,000 hectares of community forest, including an indigenous graveyard, in Ratanakkiri’s Andong Meas district, a group of NGOs have claimed. The land dispute involving 196 families living in Talav commune dates back to 2011, Chhay Thy, ...

Vietnam and China lead the pack of foreign companies granted economic land concessions in Cambodia for agro-industrial development by a wide margin, new data released by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries show. According to the ministry’s annual report, released last month, since 1993 the ...

Through a canopy of palm leaves, sunlight falls onto 1,000 four-month-old pepper plants, each one climbing about two feet up a wooden pole in the ground. “We will be ready to harvest pepper from here in about 18 to 20 months,” says one of Kep ...

While last year was full of good news for Cambodian rice exports, which hit a record-breaking 378,800 tons, 2014 is getting off to a much slower start. Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s controversial pledge to pay farmers above market rates for their rice is coming ...

About a year after offering the country’s sole agriculture policy, Forte Insurance is struggling to sell coverage. “We still need time to get farmers to understand the benefits of agricultural insurance,” said Youk Chamroenrith, director and general manager of Forte. “We have four clients signed up ...

Several dozen families in Banteay Meanchey province involved in land dispute were given 100 hectares of replacement land in O’Chrou district yesterday, but have refused to accept it because it is already claimed by more than 230 other families, two village chiefs said. The provincial government ...