Agriculture and fishing

China’s dam building spree on the upper Mekong River raises new tensions over water resources Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang obviously had China in mind when he warned recently that tensions over water resources are not only threatening economic growth but presenting a source of conflict Cambodia, ...

A total of 11 people have now died due to flooding in the country since mid-September, while the worst affected area, Banteay Meanchey province, continued to suffer amid torrential rain on Thursday night, government officials said on Friday. ...

The long-term impact of 6 tons of toxic chemicals that spilled into a stream in Kompong Chhnang province on Tuesday, killing several hundred kilograms of fish, is still unclear, the provincial department of environment said on Friday. The chemicals, identified as the cleaning agents Ridoline 560, ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Friday ordered investors in economic land concessions (ELC) to pay tax from the sixth year of their investment in a bid to speed up their agricultural production. The premier decided that investment companies receiving ELCs must pay the land tax ...

The executive committee of the Alliance of Rice Producers and Exporters of Cambodia, ARPEC, decided earlier this month to set up a commercial arm to help members get financing for a variety of rice-related activities. According to ARPEC secretary-general Hun Lak and deputy secretary-general David Van, ...

In May, the first group of vegetable producers in Cambodia was certified on the basis of COrAA’s “Standards for Chemical-free Crop Production”. The 72 farmers, belonging to the Women Chemical-free vegetable-producing group of the Vegetable Supply Co-operative in Svay Rieng, have been producing healthy vegetables for ...

Several ASEAN countries, including Cambodia, have witnessed a growing demand for organic rice that local producers cannot satisfy, according to Winfried Scheewe, adviser to the Cambodian Organic Agriculture Association (COrAA). Scheewe says demand for organic rice is on the rise, especially in the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore, but also ...

Kampong Chhnang villagers who have been hit with a new lawsuit over property that they and the wife of a senior government official both claim said yesterday that coming to court would be impossible, as they did not have a defense lawyer and needed time to locate ...

The Ambassador of African country Kenya, Richard Titus Ekai, told Deputy Prime Minister Sok An on Wednesday that he would like to see direct flights between Phnom Penh and Nairobi. Sok An met Kenyan Ambassador Ekai at his office to discuss the initiative regarding direct flights ...

An estimated 100 kg of fish were killed and about 1,000 villagers were told not to drink from a stream that was contaminated with 6 tons of an unknown chemical substance in Kompong Chhnang province on Tuesday night, police said. A truck carrying 22 containers of ...

The new list of reforms approved by the government at a high-level meeting with its foreign donors on Wednesday offer a mixed bag of targets, with some sectors, such as education, given more ambitious goals than before, while others had their ambitions scaled back and old goals ...

It has been more than two years since the Cambodian government issued a rice export policy in June 2010, aiming to export a million tonnes of milled rice by 2015. However, a shortage of capital to buy unmilled rice, known as “paddy”, together with high ...

While the global economic crisis weakened the ability of Cambodian households to purchase food, the government’s focus on agricultural production and other policies have since helped alleviate food insecurity in the country, the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development said in a new report. Between June ...

Cambodia will receive a grant of US$3.3 million from the World Trade Organisation to support rice milling, silk production and development of the Department of International Cooperation, according to Heng Sovannarith, communication officer for Trade Wide Sector Approach. Sovannarith said the Ministry of Commerce would receive the grant from ...

U.N. representatives from Japan, the European Union and Australia called on Cambodia to heed recommendations made in a report on human rights and economic land concessions by the U.N.’s envoy Surya Subedi at the Human Rights Council in Geneva Tuesday. While the E.U. commended Cambodia ...

While protesters demonstrated outside, urging land and human-rights reform, members of the donor community met with the government yesterday at the Council for the Development of Cambodia in Phnom Penh to sign off on a series of development targets that bore only a faint resemblance to those ...

Two studies have found that development on Bokor Mountain in Kampot province is threatening some of the area’s plant and animal species. The Sokimex Group has been granted development rights for the entire mountain and in May, the first of three hotels to be built ...

Five metric tonnes of certified organic rice — the first such shipment from Cambodia — will depart for the European Union this Friday. The shipment, exported from Cambodia by an entity called Green Trade, comprises three tonnes of brown rice and two tonnes of white jasmine ...

Economic land concessions (ELCs) benefit only a minority, the human rights consequences of the concessions are stark, and Cambodia’s sustainable economic development is threatened by the practice. U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi told the Human Rights Council in Geneva yesterday. Mr. Subedi cited uneven access to ...

Cambodia’s economic land concession (ELC) policies are hindering development far more than helping it and beginning to erode the country’s hard-won stability, Cambodia’s special rapporteur warned yesterday. “As I have noted in relation to other sectors in Cambodia, the existence of the legal framework on paper ...

At least five people were killed and some 15,510 families have been affected by flash floods that have been hitting the country’s Banteay Meanchey province since earlier this month, the latest report of the National Committee for Disaster Management (NCDM) showed Tuesday Some 14,300 houses have ...

Rural Cambodian communities are seeing economic benefits as a result of a biomass and farming resilience project run by GERES, a French NGO. As part of the AREA project, 200 households in Kampong Chhnang province are growing 22 varieties of trees to negate the effects of ...

The price of rubber jumped to $2,500 per tonne last week after months of the commodity steadily dropping, industry analysts reported. The jump of $100 a tonne, or 4.2 per cent, comes after the price for rubber dropped in June from above $3,000 per tonne, according ...

The Kompong Chhnang Provincial Court has summoned four villagers embroiled in a long-running land dispute over charges of alleged incitement  and violence involving a company owned by the wife of government minister, a court official said yesterday. Two summoned vllagers, from Kompong Tralach district’s Ta Ches commune, faced similar ...