Agriculture

Authorities in Battambang province’s Phnom Proek district shut down eight unlicensed gold mines Saturday and Sunday after a study revealed they were producing toxic runoff blamed for the deaths of three cattle last week, officials said. Deputy governor Pech Choun said four mines in the area ...

Surrounded by 100-armed police officers, authorities in Mondolkiri province yesterday said the roughly 200 families living on a rubber company’s land concession in Koh Nhek district have until Friday to leave their homes. After having already seen district police burn down three of their homes over ...

When it became the first—and still the only—company to list on Cambodia’s stock market on April 18, the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority saw its share price shoot up some 50 percent on its first day of trading before beginning two weeks of steady decline. Since ...

In a land dispute with overtones of last week’s deadly eviction in Kratie province, villagers in Mondolkiri province yesterday said dozens of police were surrounding their houses and threatening to force them out of a private land concession. Sen Sophon, one of about 200 families in ...

The price of crocodile hatchlings in Siem Reap province has dropped drastically, and many local farmers are worrying about the future viability of crocodile farming. Tim Bunseng, a crocodile farmer in Siem Reap with around 200 female hatchlings, said the price he can get has dropped ...

After a three-day blockade, soldiers pulled out over the weekend from the Kratie province village where a teenage girl was shot dead last week by government security forces, officials said yesterday. However, human rights workers denied a report by a provincial official that freedom of ...

Growing demand for pork on the Thai market since March has lead to an increase in the price of live pigs in Cambodia, as Thai farmers reduce the amount of live pigs exported to Cambodia in order to fuel local demand, officials said yesterday. ...

Cambodia’s rubber prices declined almost six per cent in the past two weeks, caused by concern over the European crisis with Greece, industry players and Cambodian officials said yesterday. Men Sopheak, deputy director general of Chop Rubber Plantation, a big rubber exporter in Cambodia, said the ...

Cambodia’s rice exports in 2012 may fall significantly compared to last year, due to high fuel prices, soaring logistics costs and high prices. According to local sources, Cambodian rice shipments to Europe this month are at a $200 markup per container over those from Thailand and ...

Authorities in Kratie province have denied entry to journalists and rights workers to the site of violent land clashes that led to the death of a teenage girl on Wednesday. Rights workers say they fear for the safety of villagers in Broma village, but police say ...

Security forces have sealed off a village in eastern Cambodia and denied entry to human rights workers after the fatal shooting of a teenager in the latest violent eviction aimed at clearing land for development. Soldiers said they needed to secure the area around Proma village, ...

The government needs to act – and act now – to review all economic land concessions, which un­derscore the Kingdom’s dark disease of violent land disputes, rights groups said yesterday. Ten days after Prime Minister Hun Sen signed a regulation for an immediate and indefinite moratorium ...

Rapidly increasing logistics costs and low regional rice prices would hinder Cambodia’s rice-export target this year, with one expert saying that milled-rice exports could fall to half of last year’s shipments. The cost of shipping rice to Europe climbed by more than 50 per cent between ...

An increase in the amount of cigarettes smuggled into Cambodia has forced the country’s largest cigarette manufacturer to scale down production by nearly half, leaving local tobacco farmers with little choice than to sell their crop at a reduced price to Vietnam. According to Tola Ponlu, ...

The Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture (Cedac) said yesterday it would begin exporting organic rice to Europe in June for the first time as part of a one-year agreement with a German-based equitable trade organization. “We’re looking to break more into the international ...

Cambodian-owned TTY corporation will invest US$6 million in a rice milling plant in Kampong Speu province, company officials said yesterday. Heng Sarath, TTY deputy director, said the factory would be built on national road 6, and would mill 20 tonnes of rice per year. Construction is ...

Security forces in Cambodia have shot dead a 15-year-old girl who was taking part in a land protest. She was demonstrating against the development of a rubber plantation on farmland in eastern Kratie province. Authorities say local residents, armed with axes and crossbows, would not vacate the ...

Villagers in Kompong Chnang province have resorted to black magic as a means to even the odds with a long-running land dispute with a powerful company, KDC Development, holding a spell-casing ceremony on Saturday to curse the firm and the provincial court for allegedly colluding ...

A nearly year-long land dispute in Oddar Meanchey has been resolved for most parties involved by the intervention of two RCAF generals, but critics contend the more than 2,400 hectare-giveaway is a ploy to influence upcoming elections. Generals Kun Kim and Chea Tara yesterday granted 1.5 ...

Security forces shot and killed a 15-year-old girl on Wednesday during a clash with about 200 villagers armed with axes and crossbows in eastern Cambodia, in the latest of several violent evictions aimed at clearing land for development. ...

Companies that have seized land, confiscated livestock and destroyed homes and property have gone unpunished, the UN special rapporteur for Cambodia has said. Surya Subedi, professor of international law at Leeds University, said all the communities he had met raised the issue of misconduct by ...

Srey ambel district, Koh Kong province – A roadblock by locals in a long-running land dispute with CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat petered out after several hours in the dying rain on Saturday without the protesters winning any concessions from either the senator’s firm or ...

TTY director-general Na Marady, a well-known Cambodian tycoon, has been accused of owing money to farmers from whom he bought potatoes on credit more than a year ago in Memot district’s Koki and Kompoan communes in Kampong Cham province. The villagers complained on Friday that Na ...

U.N. human rights envoy to Cambodia Surya Subedi wrapped up his seventh mission to Cambodia on Friday, saying that his own assessments of land concessions confirmed that they are being unfairly granted and leaving many communities out in the cold. Mr. Subedi said that meetings held ...