Agriculture and fishing

Cambodia’s Soma Group and Thailand’s C.P. Intertrade on Thursday signed a joint-venture agreement to build a sophisticated rice milling and refining factory in the western Kampong Speu province of Cambodia. The deal was inked between Sok Puthyvuth, chief executive officer of Soma Group, and Prasit Damrongchietanon, ...

Pailin province’s $5 million animal-feed processing plant and warehouse is to finish construction in the next three months and it is a welcomed development for the local farming community. The plant’s owner, Chea Kea, who also owns Diamond Crown casino on the border with Thailand in ...

Lagging demand from foreign buyers has led to Cambodian rice being stockpiled at the country’s mills, according to the head of the country’s peak rice body. Sok Puthyvuth, president of the Cambodia Rice Federation (CRF), said that with exporters receiving fewer orders, the country’s larger rice ...

The Ministry of Commerce has vowed to uncover more markets for Cambodian products to help buffer against price fluctuations caused by the Kingdom’s dependency on neighboring countries. In a response to concerns raised on social media, Commerce Minister Sun Chanthol wrote on the ministry’s official Facebook ...

A high-level agricultural official in Kampong Speu province has been charged with stealing thousands of dollars from paddy rice farmers after promising to deliver them land titles in January 2013, a rights group representative and a court prosecutor said yesterday. Cher Pich, 44, deputy director of ...

Representatives of the 301 families granted a social land concession in Kratie province to resolve a long-running land dispute said Sunday that they filed a report with authorities on Saturday detailing the new families that have since gathered with them in the hope of also ...

Military police joined forces with the Fisheries Administration in Kompong Thom province on Friday to arrest six men and confiscate four bulldozers being used to clear protected flooded forest in Stong district’s fisheries conservation area, officials said Sunday. District military police commander Khun Bunho said that ...

Villagers in Koh Kong’s Botum Sakor district said Friday that Union Development Group (UDG) used military forces to prevent villagers from planting paddy rice on land that is locked in a longstanding dispute, a claim the military denied. Khun Thala, a 40-year-old villager, said Friday that ...

Bangladesh and Cambodia have decided to set up a joint commission to boost bilateral relations and conclude bilateral agreements on agricultural and cultural cooperation, investment promotion and protection. The agreements will be inked during Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s three-day official visit to Dhaka beginning on ...

Italy plans to lobby the European Union to halt duty-free imports of rice from Cambodia to protect local rice growers and millers, an industry source says. In a report Thursday, oryza.com said Italy was preparing to submit a report to Brussels saying that Cambodian rice was ...

Mixed security forces led by Kratie province’s court prosecutor yesterday arrested six people in a huge illegal logging bust, confiscating more than 100 cubic metres of protected luxury-grade timber. The arrests of both Cambodian and Vietnamese nationals were the culmination of a three-day crackdown by prosecutor ...

Human rights workers say the US and other countries should censure Thailand over fisheries practices that mean near-slavery for many Cambodians and others. An investigative report by the UK-based Guardian newspaper exposed serious abuses in the Thai fishing trade, where workers are cheated of pay, kept ...

Cambodia’s salt production rose sharply at the end of this year’s harvest season thanks to more favourable weather conditions enhancing yields. Salt production in Kampot and Kep provinces – home to Cambodia’s salt fields – reached 147,000 tonnes this year, nearly double the 80,000 tonnes recorded ...

US credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has ranked Cambodia’s economy and creditworthiness as the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Of 116 nations measured by S&P as part of a vulnerability index published last month – with a number 1 ranking being the ...

A Battambang bridge project isn’t to blame for blocking a river and preventing water from reaching parched rice fields, an Asian Development Bank investigation concluded yesterday. Bavel district farmers accused the bank-funded construction project of choking the river since construction began in December, leaving their recently ...

When Cambodia’s most prominent forest activist, Chut Wutty, was gunned down in April 2012, the community network he created to sabotage the rampant deforestation of this vast forest fragmented. The forest patrols that he organised nearly ground to a halt. Without money to fund large-scale expeditions, ...

Kompong Chhnang provincial authorities allegedly locked villagers out of the provincial hall after dozens came to deliver a complaint against the wife of Mines and Energy Minister Suy Sem, before locking out a newly appointed councilor who left the building to talk with them. The villagers ...

Representatives for the 200 Cambodian families suing U.K. sugar firm Tate & Lyle for allegedly profiting off of their stolen land say they have rejected the firm’s latest offer to settle the dispute and are looking forward to their first court date, set for October. The ...

As the sun rises on Tonle Sap Lake, fishermen head out from floating villages like this one, past half-submerged mangroves and flooded shrub land, to check their nets, much as they have for centuries. Every year, the lake yields about 300,000 tons of fish, making it ...

Fishermen who have lived off the Tonle Sap river in Phnom Penh’s Russey Keo district for generations were forced upstream recently after hundreds of dead fish mysteriously appeared in local waters. The 29 families who live on houseboats from which they cast their traps started moving ...

ORO Financecorp Plc held its official launch on Friday, joining the growing ranks of microfinance institutions in the Kingdom. ORO Financecorp started providing business, agricultural and tractor loans in January with a $4 million capital investment from Seng Enterprise Co Ltd of Cambodia and Creed Asia ...

At Chraing Chamreh wholesale fish market in Phnom Penh’s Russei Keo district, men frantically scoop dark, snake-like Trey Phtok fish out of a huge steel tank and into a wicker basket. The flickering pile of tails and gaping mouths is placed on a scale and weighs ...

Twelve families locked in a land dispute in Kampot province blocked a construction company on Wednesday from dumping earth onto fields they maintain are theirs, villagers and a rights worker said Thursday. The villagers say the company began encroaching on their land in 2011, when they ...

In December 2011, the managing director of Megagreen Imex Cambodia, Renne Outh, proudly announced that his firm had inked a $21 million deal to be the first to ship Cambodian rice to the Philippines. Nearly two and a half years on, not a single Cambodian grain ...