Agriculture and fishing

Investors in Cambodia’s northeast on Monday announced an investment in a cassava-processing plant in Battambang province. Prak Phoung Kesoa, assistant CEO at Battambang Agro-Industry, said yesterday that the plant would be 100 per cent Cambodian owned ...

In an effort to make up for the low salt yield this year caused by unexpected rainfall during the dry season, farmers in salt-producing Kep and Kampot provinces said yesterday that they would try to continue harvesting the mineral for another month even though the ...

Amid mounting calls for further investigation, officials said yesterday they were establishing a task force to look into the death of outspoken forestry activist Chut Wutty, while the family of the military police officer who allegedly killed Chut Wutty before turning the gun on himself ...

Deep in Koh Kong’s forested district on Thursday, Chut Wutty, 46, the founder of the Natural Resource Protection Group, and In Rattana, 32, a military police officer, were shot dead. Chut Wutty, a forestry activist who has dedicated himself to preserving Cambodia’s disappearing forests since ...

The military police officer who killed well-known anti-logging campaigner Chut Wutty, 46, on Thursday in Koh Kong province then died by his own hand after turning his AK-47 assault rifle on himself in an apparent act of instant suicide following the slaying of the forestry ...

The government needs to enforce legislation on protecting the environment, even as it gives away masses of land and resources in concessions, or risk jeopardising its economic future, the UN assistant secretary-general for disaster risk reduction said yesterday. “The most critical impact of disasters today is ...

Tonle Sap fishermen and fisheries experts said yesterday that illegal fishing on the lake had increased substantially since Prime Minister Hun Sen cancelled commercial fishing lots in March and urged authorities to crack down on violators. The prime minister suspended commercial lots across the country last ...

Cambodia has made real progress in decreasing cases of malaria – already surpassing the Millennium Development Goal for malaria four years ahead of the 2015 target – but certain communities still face major challenges in combating the disease, officials said yesterday on World Malaria Day. Although ...

As the end of this year’s cashew harvest nears, the yield in two major producing provinces has fallen compared with last year, officials and farmers said, while traders said that the price of the nuts had also dropped since last year. In Kompong Cham province, this ...

The tonnage of the Kingdom’s milled-rice exports jumped nearly 50 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter, according to the Ministry of Commerce, with export revenues soaring as much as 82 per cent. Total exports of milled rice for the first three months of 2012 hit ...

In Sihanoukville, just north of Cambodia’s only deep-water port, stands the headquarters of Chenla Seafood. A uniformed guard stands watch at the gate, which opens on to manicured grounds and a two-building facility that houses what will likely become the country’s premier seafood processor. A few ...

A Thai ban on Cambodian corn and other agricultural products led to a 65 per cent year-on-year drop in the Kingdom’s corn exports during the first two months of the year, officials claimed yesterday. January and February exports fell to 2,333 tonnes from 6,694 a year ...

A Cambodian opposition leader, [Mu Sochua], has urged the federal government to stop Australian companies from accepting land concessions in Cambodia, saying they are contributing to a pressing humanitarian crisis displacing up to one million people. ...

Farm mechanization is steadily on the rise, with the number of tractors and power tillers in the country nearly doubling to more than 67,000 between 2008 and 2011, according to figures released by the Ministry of Agriculture this week. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday told senior officials to stop investors from using land concessions as a pretext for logging and to discuss the possibility of reducing the amount of time such concessions can last. The government placed a moratorium on logging concessions in 2002 to ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday blasted local officials for not working hard enough to curb illegal fishing in and around the Tonle Sap lake, where fisheries crimes are still rampant despite 90,000 hectares of protected areas. “Don’t do illegal fishing, use illegal equipment to fish, or ...

About 70 villagers in Pursat province’s Krakor district held a daylong prayer ceremony yesterday to request help from spirits to curse the powerful Pheapimex company for destroying their farmland, villagers said. Pheapimex, owned by the wife of CPP Senator Lao Meng Khin, has maintained a 316,000-hectare ...

Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen announced plans Thursday to encourage rubber smallholdings in a bid to expand production as the country promotes the cash crop as the number two commodity after rice. Hun Sen said the government will support not only large-scale rubber plantations but also ...

Cambodian rubber exports declined 3 per cent year-on-year during the first two months of 2012, according to figures from the Ministry of Commerce. The value of the exports fell by nearly a third. ...

Despite a slow start for milled-rice exports in 2012 brought on by falling regional prices, officials yesterday predicted Cambodian shipments would more than double to 400,000 tonnes this year. Tax exemptions from Europe, which boosted milled-rice exports to about 173,000 tonnes last year, would continue to ...

Rice production grew by 6.42 percent last year, despite vast tracts of paddy being devastated by flooding, according to figures released yesterday by the Ministry of Agriculture. In the 2011 to 2012 season, 8.78 million tons of rice were harvested from 2.78 million hectares of ...

Provincial authorities released land protester Bun Ratha, who was detained on Friday and sent to Kratie prison, after his supporters blocked traffic on National Road 73 yesterday. More than 500 villagers from Chhlong district’s Kampong Damrei commune, who are in a dispute with rubber company Kasotim ...

About 150 villagers embroiled in a long-running land dispute with CPP Senator and tycoon Ly Yong Phat protested peacefully outside the Kompong Speu Provincial Court yesterday as five villagers were questioned over accusations that they are illegally occupying the senator’s land. The villagers, from Thpong district’s ...

An across-the-board trade and investment deal signed with China’s Yunnan province on Friday was a jump-start to Chinese President Hu Jintao’s pledge a week earlier to double bilateral trade with the Kingdom to US$5 billion by 2017. The package signing, which brought a delegation of 45 ...