Agriculture and fishing

Residents of Kratie province had an education in conservation yesterday as the government and outside partners reiterated a September sub-decree banning gill nets on a sizable stretch of the Mekong in a bid to protect the badly endangered Mekong River dolphin. Touch Seang Tana, head of the Commission ...

Laos has contracted firms to build and operate another significant hydro-power plant on the Mekong River system, adding to the existing furor over potential effects on downstream countries such as Cambodia from the controversial Xayaburi dam. The contracts, reportedly worth $1 billion, are for a series of three dams making ...

Fishery resources could fall this year because of a lack of flooding along rivers and waterways impeding fish from travelling freely or finding food to encourage their growth, a fishery official says. Sam Nov, deputy general director of Fishery Administration at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fishery and ...

Government-issued economic land concessions are making the country’s indigenous communities in the northeast provinces worse off, according to a study by the Mekong Institute of Cambodia. Presented yesterday at the 2012 Development Research Forum in Phnom Penh, the study comes on top of mounting criticism of ...

Some questions remain about whether hydro dams on the upper Mekong River in China exacerbated conditions during Cambodia’s devastating drought of 2010, environmental groups say, as China’s dam program powers ahead. When the first power-generating unit was switched on last month at China’s giant 262-metre tall ...

Welcome to Cambodia’s lone Silkworm Egg Production Center, and to the techniques that are being used to prevent and monitor diseases that are currently killing off more than 50 percent of all silkworm production in the country. Established by the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), ...

About 200 families in Koh Kong province’s Botum Sakor district were threatened with legal action yesterday by the district governor, who told them their 100-hectare plantation had been earmarked for development by a Chinese firm, a village representative alleged. Two days later, Botum Sakor district ...

Toxic runoff from small-scale gold mining operations in Battambang province killed two cattle on Wednesday, the latest casualties from pollution in the area led to the closing of more than 100 mines earlier this year. Officials from the provincial mines department yesterday said they were unaware of ...

Trading company Galuh Prabu Trijaya is closing in on a deal with Cambodia that could boost sales of Indonesian fertilizer and agricultural machinery by $1.5 billion over five years. The deal would double Indonesia’s annual exports to the Mekong country, as the largest economy in Southeast ...

At the Cambodian Rice Forum 2012, Agriculture Minister Chan Sarun said that if the Kingdom wants to reach the government’s goal of exporting 1 million tons of rice annually by 2015, rice mills need to join forces and work closely together. Such an association [of rice ...

The coastal guard has seized a fishing vessel flying the flag of Cambodia off the cost of Primorye, the press service for the Border Guard Department of the Federal Security Service for the Primorye Territory has reported. The vessel Anteus (registered in Cambodia, owned by the ...

A busty woman with a scratchy voice shrieks into an intricate set up of radios, microphones and walkie-talkies, her tone not unlike that of a breathless Flemington race-caller. The woman is in continuous contact with up to 100 men peppered over rice fields fringing Battambang, analyzing the ...

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said yesterday that climate change will be a concern in some Asian countries, including Cambodia. He encouraged the countries to find ways to manage any affects on their economies. Economists recognize it will lower growth in some main sectors of the economy – ...

Cambodian and Vietnamese officials agreed Thursday to details of a proposed cross-border project to improve fisheries management between Prey Veng Province and Dong Thap Province in Vietnam. The agreement came during a two-day meeting chaired by So Sophort, deputy secretary general of the Cambodian National Mekong ...

The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court questioned two well-known human rights workers yesterday in an incitement lawsuit brought against them by a CPP commune chief, one of those questioned said. About 200 ethnic minority Tumpuon villagers, embroiled in a land dispute with the DM Group rubber company, protested ...

More than 150 businesses and associations from around the world gathered on Phnom Penh’s Koh Pich yesterday for the launch of the country’s annual food and hospitality exhibition. Two events, the International Food, Drinks and Wine Show and the Cambodian International Hotel, Restaurant and Catering Industry ...

Thailand’s rice intervention scheme is distorting trade around Southeast Asia, attracting rice smuggled from neighbouring countries into Thai government stockpiles, but genuine business remains slack and Thai prices have fallen this week. Cheap rice from Cambodia and Myanmar is finding its way into Thai government warehouses ...

Villagers on Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia, who depend on fishing for subsistence, say their livelihoods are threatened by illegal commercial fishing, which continues after a government ban. And they say authorities in charge of enforcing the ban are being bribed to look the other ...

The Federation of Cambodian Rice Millers Association in Battambang province will establish a biomass-generated electricity plant in Battambang, an insider said. The plant will cost up to US$10 million and generate 10 megawatts of electricity. Phou Puy, president of the Federation of Cambodian Rice Millers Association (CRMA) and the ...

More investment is needed as well as additional assistance for farmers if the government wants to meet its export goal of 1 million tons of rice a year by 2015, according to experts at a recent rice sector meeting in Phnom Penh. Participants said rice millers would need substantial access ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen again addressed recent criticism from [Surya Subedi] the U.N.’s human rights envoy to Cambodia , during a speech yesterday in Bateay Meanchey province that focused on land disputes. Mr. Hun Sen was speaking in Thma Puok district’s Banteay Chhmar commune, where he ...

Officials from Prime Minister’s Hun Sen’s cabinet yesterday accepted the petition of 110 Preah Vihear villager representatives seeking intervention in a land dispute with defunct NGO DARPO. Hun Sen cabinet member Nov Ra told villagers who protested in front of the prime minister’s house to return ...

Four years after they began fighting the well-connected concessionaire DM Group, members of the ethnic Tampuon who remain in Svay Sor village are exhausted. While the DM Group has seen its complaints against villagers and activists routinely heard at court, those filed by the affected families ...

Evictees wearing small model houses on their heads to symbolize their struggles marched to the National Assembly yesterday to ask authorities to intervene to stop more forced evictions. About 400 representatives of 40 communities across the capital joined human rights activists at the former Dey Krahorm eviction site ...