Agriculture and fishing

Just weeks ahead of the main fishing season on the Tonle Sap river, which supplies the majority of the fish used in the Kingdom’s traditional cooking sauce, prahok, government officials are predicting a better catch this season as water levels have recovered from last year’s ...

Record stockpiles of food will keep worldwide prices low for 2017 and much could depend on China’s huge stocks of many commodities, Dutch food and agri financing bank Rabobank predicted yesterday, painting a dour picture for Cambodia’s food exporters struggling against low prices. ...

A local subsidiary of a South Korean confectionary giant is investing $40 million to develop what it claims will be the world’s largest pepper plantation on a sprawling 1,000-hectare estate in eastern Cambodia, a company executive said yesterday. ...

It has been nearly a year since the government signed a memorandum of understanding with South Korea that aimed to put Cambodian mangoes on the shelves of supermarkets in Seoul, yet local producers say there is little sign of any movement. ...

Reduced fees for the loading of containers of milled rice for export, fixed for the next two years, came into effect on Tuesday as part of government efforts to boost the rice sector’s global competitiveness. According to a letter signed by Economy Minister Aun Pornmoniroth, dated ...

Agriculture officials and struggling smallholder tobacco farmers are cautiously hopeful that tariff exemptions granted under a new trade agreement with Vietnam will lift sagging demand for their crops. ...

Four Cambodian products – Kampot salt, Phnom Srok silk of Banteay Meanchey province, fragrant milled rice from Battambang province and Kampot durian – could be given geographical indication (GI) status by the European Union (EU), said a senior official from the Ministry of Commerce and ...

American-owned dairy farm Moo Moo Farms is looking to markedly increase production of its raw – unpasteurized – milk and increase its current herd of 25 cows. The farm, located in Kandal province, began operations earlier this year. According to a statement from the Ministry of ...

In response to persistent rumors of rice in Cambodia being adulterated with rice-like plastic pellets, the government announced yesterday that it would boost testing of rice across the country, and threatened to take legal action against any unsubstantiated claims. ...

A project in Stung Treng province is giving women the opportunity to participate in one of the fastest-growing food-production sectors in Cambodia: aquaculture fisheries – a field that has also traditionally been among its most male-dominated. ...

Over 3 tonnes of contaminated prahok – made of fish illegally imported from Vietnam – were confiscated on Friday by Takeo authorities from some of the same sites that in September had already been warned to stop using smuggled fish.​ ...

About 70 people protested in the waters off Koh Khyang in Preah Sihanouk province’s Prey Nup district against the demarcation of four hectare-sized areas designated as shelters for blood cockles, saying it hindered their fishing and impacted their livelihoods, according to a rights group yesterday. ...

The large-scale rubber plantations that arrived in force in Cambodia a decade ago as global rubber prices moved to historic peaks are facing sober prospects as trees they planted before the commodity’s prices headed south begin to reach maturity. ...

At least 17,571 hectares of rice fields were affected by the recent floods – of which about 3,186 hectares were severely damaged, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) yesterday, which urged all provincial agriculture departments to immediately evaluate the affects from ...

In an effort to help small and medium-sized rice millers and exporters that are presently unable to provide suitable collateral to qualify for the government’s emergency $27 million rice loan, the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) has joined with the Cambodia Rice Federation (CRF) to ...

A report issued by the Ministry of Agriculture for the first nine months of this year showed a dramatic decline in government revenue from the fisheries sector, while providing incomplete information on revenue from other agricultural sectors. ...

The government’s much-heralded $27 million emergency rice fund, announced last month amid complaints from rice farmers and millers that cheap competition and low-storage capacity was driving down prices, has so far had only limited takers among rice millers. ...

Cambodia is close to signing an ambitious agreement with the Indonesian government that would pave the way for the Kingdom’s rice producers to export 1 million tonnes of rice under a new quota scheme, a state official said yesterday. ...

A rising global demand for dates is behind the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed in Phnom Penh yesterday between companies from Cambodia, Thailand and Israel, seeking to start growing the fruit in Cambodia within the next 10 years. ...

Extreme weather attributed to the tail-end of an El Niño event continues to wreak havoc on the nation’s agricultural sector, with more than 20,000 hectares of rice fields damaged so far this year, a government agricultural expert said yesterday. ...

Rubber exports have continued to rise in the first nine months of the year, despite the fall and current stagnation of prices as global demand continues to stall, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF). ...

Ente Nazionale Risi (ENR), Italy’s national rice agency, has raised concern over increased European rice imports from countries such as Cambodia, according to rice industry publication Oryza. ...

Kampong Speu province will soon be home to a Chinese-funded agricultural special economic zone (SEZ) with facilities to research plant diseases, after the Ministry of Agriculture and Tian Rui (Cambodia) Agricultural Cooperation SEZ Co., signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) yesterday. ...

A little-publicized sub-decree signed in July and discovered by the Post yesterday in an NGO database raises questions as to whether the eviction on Saturday of six ethnic Kuoy families in Preah Vihear was in contravention of an order by Prime Minister Hun Sen. ...