Crop products and commodities

Cambodian paddy rice production fell only slightly during the first half of this year’s dry season, despite 12,000 hectares of usually productive land deemed unusable due to last year’s floods. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, dry season paddy rice production between December ...

Preah Vihear provincial governor Oum Mara has sent a letter to inform Interior Minister Sar Kheng that he is ordering an NGO to close its local offices, on the grounds that the organization is inciting villagers to destroy sugarcane farmed by a Chinese company. In the ...

Police in Preah Vihear province say they have uncovered more evidence of child labor on a Chinese-owned sugarcane plantation and will send the case to court if further investigation confirms their preliminary findings. A former employee of the Lan Feng plantation filed a complaint last month ...

As Thailand sells its rice reserves and reforms in Myanmar are rewarded with more access to markets abroad, Cambodia’s total exports of milled rice are on the decline, falling more than 10 per cent in the first quarter of this year compared with the same ...

The government and industry insiders are worried about the steady decline of rubber prices over the last three years, during which the area it is cultivated in has grown. “Farmers and investors raised concern . . . over the trend of the market and the price of natural ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen said that he would like to see the stronger economic and trade cooperation between Cambodia and Brunei. And Cambodia want to increase the rice export to Brunei. ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said Friday that the country needed to prepare more measures to curb the spread of H5N1 strain of avian influenza, which broke out the worst last year and this year. “We have done a lot to control the spread of the ...

A company in Mondulkiri’s Sok San commune has been gradually cutting down a community forest, pushing more than 100 families off their land, villagers said yesterday. “That land belongs to us, the government granted it to us in 1999. But the company invaded and let us ...

A 44-year-old woman was run over and killed by a harvesting machine on Sunday while working on a sugarcane plantation in Kompong Speu province owned by CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat, marking at least the second death on the plantation since December. Y Mom, originally from ...

European Union Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht said he has no plans to launch an investigation into Cambodia’s much-criticized sugarcane plantations after a meeting with Commerce Minister Sun Chanthol in Phnom Penh on Tuesday. Bottom line: Cambodia’s free trade benefits to Europe are safe for ...

Dozens of ethnic minority Kreung villagers protested outside the Ratanakkiri Provincial Court on Monday, demanding the release of a fellow Kreung man presently in pretrial detention for setting fire to a pile of wood on land the community sold in 2007 but claims it was ...

The Ministry of Agriculture has created designated bird flu contamination zones in Phnom Penh and Kandal province following the deaths of hundreds of birds due to the H5N1 virus, officials said Wednesday. Agriculture Minister Ouk Rabon signed two directives late last month saying that poultry being ...

An existing moratorium on economic land concessions should be no impediment to pouring more cash into the Kingdom’s booming, and highly criticised, rubber trade, industry executives in the capital heard yesterday, as many current ELCs can simply be recycled to a new crop of investors. Ly ...

More than 20 families working on a controversial palm oil plantation in Ratanakkiri province owned by the Hoang Anh Lumphat company have filed a complaint with rights group Adhoc accusing the owners of improperly withholding one month’s pay. Lor Sophal said he and another 22 families, ...

The 19 families in Pailin province who were told by police and military police on Saturday to vacate their land filed a complaint with Adhoc on Monday, the provincial coordinator for the NGO said. Authorities told the families to move on Saturday from the 95-hectares they ...

More than 60 police and military police informed 19 families farming on a plot of land in Pailin province’s Sala Krao district on Saturday that they would have to move as they were growing crops on state land. However, Prak Sophima, provincial coordinator for rights group ...

As buyers swoop in to purchase Thai rice at garage-sale prices, Cambodian exporters are dealing with lower than usual rates, and the results are being felt all the way down the supply chain to the farmers themselves. New figures from rice industry publication Oryza show that ...

Though an occasional mango or pineapple can be spotted on Eung Uy Kheam’s sleepy farm in Kampot province, it’s the 130 durian trees that the fourth-generation farmer calls his cash crop. In Kampot, on Cambodia’s southwest coast, a pilot project led by the provincial Department ...

Environment Minister Say Sam Al failed to meet the villagers locked in a long-running land dispute with the Chinese-owned company Union Development Group (UDG) on Wednesday, despite visiting company officials in Koh Kong province, according to a rights worker and a provincial official. Mr. Sam Al ...

Third-party auditors hired by The Coca-Cola Company are conducting an audit of Cambodian sugar suppliers, NGO and community representatives said yesterday. “Coke has commissioned them to conduct an assessment on their suppliers. They will talk to all parties, the community, NGOs and the company,” said Eang ...

The International Finance Corporation’s compliance ombudsman has officially accepted a complaint filed by ethnic minority families in Ratanakkiri province against the IFC for investing in rubber plantations accused of stealing land and clearing forests. In a letter sent to the families on Monday, the ombudsman deems ...

The Chinese-owned Union Development Group in Koh Kong province is bulldozing swaths of its land concession, originally intended for a massive tourist resort, to plant cassava and palm oil trees instead, a CNRP lawmaker-elect said Monday. Son Chhay, lawmaker-elect and CNRP chief whip, visited the area ...

Through a canopy of palm leaves, sunlight falls onto 1,000 four-month-old pepper plants, each one climbing about two feet up a wooden pole in the ground. “We will be ready to harvest pepper from here in about 18 to 20 months,” says one of Kep ...

While last year was full of good news for Cambodian rice exports, which hit a record-breaking 378,800 tons, 2014 is getting off to a much slower start. Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s controversial pledge to pay farmers above market rates for their rice is coming ...