Agriculture

Energy demand in Southeast Asia is expected to increase by more than 80 per cent by 2035, fuelling some $240 billion in oil spending, a new report from the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) shows. In its “Southeast Asia Energy Outlook” published yesterday, the Paris-based IAEA ...

In Cambodia, there is talk of change. Not just from Hun Sen, the prime minister, who has promised reforms after his party suffered a significant blow in recent elections, but from environmental activists and campaigners, who say there has never before been such an opportunity ...

Land covering an area the size of Italy has been taken from indigenous communities around the world by suppliers to the biggest names in the food and drinks industry, according to a major new report. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are among the companies criticised by Oxfam for ...

Vietnam Dairy Products Joint-Stock Co., the nation’s largest dairy producer, is building a milk factory in Cambodia as it plans a global expansion to more than double annual revenue to $3 billion by 2017. The company known as Vinamilk is opening a plant in the capital ...

Activists are skeptical that Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen will follow through on a pledge to stop a contentious practice of appropriating rural land for commercial use, an issue that hurt the leader and his party in elections in July. In its new five-year political platform ...

Preparing for a demonstration expected to draw thousands of garment workers this morning, Ath Thorn, president of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers Democratic Union (C.CAWDU), said yesterday that he feared the possibility of a heavy-handed military police response. About 4,000 workers gathered at SL ...

Cambodia had exported 288,300 tons of fresh and dry cassava in the first eight months of the year, down 56 percent compared with same period last year, the figures of the Commerce Ministry said Sunday. The country generated total revenue of 15.2 million U.S. dollars from ...

Cambodia has reported a 45 percent increase in dry rubber exports in the first eight months of the year, the figures of the Ministry of Commerce showed Saturday. From January to August this year, the country had exported 45, 530 tons of dry rubber, up 45 ...

With the long-ruling CPP sworn in to govern for another five years despite the opposition CNRP abstaining from sitting in the National Assembly due to election irregularities, a new report argues that imminent threats to Cam­bodia’s future development can only be overcome with significant government ...

Following a high-level meeting yesterday, Cambodia National Rescue Party leader Sam Rainsy said that his party would seek to restart negotiations with the ruling party and possibly join the government. The move marks an apparent about-turn from a party press conference held on Wednesday when Rainsy ...

The government’s latest five-year strategy calls for a complete halt to economic land concessions (ELCs) and an inquiry into those still in the pipeline. But the plan has drawn scepticism from conservationists and rights groups, who pointed out that loopholes have been liberally applied after the ...

The former director of a Vietnamese-owned rubber firm was sentenced in absentia to two and a half years in prison by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Monday, and ordered to pay $800,000 in compensation for defrauding his former employer, a court official said yesterday. “The ...

Cambodia exported 221,027 tons of milled rice in the first seven months of the year, an increase of 103 percent compared to the same period last year, according to figures from the Ministry of Commerce. Officials and rice experts said the increase in exports was thanks ...

About 20 people grinned for the camera as they posed in front of a flagpole-like structure located just off a muddy dirt road in Kampong Chhnang province’s Samaki Meanchey district on Thursday morning. While a rather unimpressive visual, the agrometerological station is a first-of-its-kind device in ...

The case of a Battambang provincial government official ac­cused of embezzling some $200,000 in state funds has been referred to the Anti-Corruption Unit in Phnom Penh, provincial officials said Thursday. Battambang Provincial Court deputy prosecutor Long Hokmeng said a two-week investigation into the case brought against ...

Cambodia has seen a remarkable rise in the exports of milled rice in the first eight months of the year due to increasing demand on international markets, official figures showed Wednesday. The data, from the single window secretariat for facilitating milled rice exports, recorded that the ...

KAMPONG SPEU PROVINCE— Three years ago, Pao had a farm and a charcoal stove near a stream in a community called Omlaing in western Cambodia. The farm gave her rice, charcoal sales gave her extra income and the nearby forest provided edible and medicinal plants. Pao ...

State-owned Green Trade Company has signed an agreement with China’s Shandong Meijing Rice Co Ltd to export 100,000 tonnes of Cambodia’s milled rice. The deal was signed between Chinese and Cambodian officials on September 4 at the China-ASEAN summit in the southwest Chinese city of Nanning, ...

India-based Tata International Ltd announced yesterday that it would import and distribute its Farmtrac Tractors in Cambodia to profit from the country’s growing agricultural sector. Speaking at the launching ceremony at the Koh Pich exhibition centre, Jitendra Manghinani, country manager of Tata South East Asia (Cambodia), ...

More than 2,000 cattle in Svay Rieng province are infected with the potentially fatal foot-and-mouth disease, officials said yesterday. Pen Chhanthy, chief of the provincial animal health and production office, said that cattle in six districts of Svay Rieng had returned positive tests for the ...

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has said that its future support of agricultural development in Cambodia depends on the outcome of an investigation into a provincial official accused of embezzling funds from JICA-donated fertilizer. The accused, deputy bureau chief of Battambang’s department of agriculture Seng ...

While New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra is working overtime to restore its damaged brand in the wake of a contaminated baby milk scare that triggered a global recall, local distributors whose products included the suspect ingredient are defending their own reputations. Local supplier Dumex Cambodia ...

A Thai-owned sugar company has threatened legal action against a newspaper that ran a story and video depicting the use of child labour at its Koh Kong province plantation, but advocates on the ground there say the children are indeed used as employees. The Bangkok Post yesterday reported ...

Responding to growing demand in US and EU markets, organic rice exports have surged, reaching 200 tonnes in the first six months of this year, compared with 100 tonnes for all of last year. Exports of organic rice are meagre compared with other varieties, such ...