News

Cassava plantings in Battambang province dropped more than 18 per cent in the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2011, according to agriculture officials. The decease is a result of that previous year’s yield fetching a low price and farmers ...

Cambodian farmers often turn to pesticides when trying to stop insects from destroying crops, but the Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture (Cedac) has come up with a better idea: frogs. “Frogs are important to protect rice plants from damage by insects, especially during ...

Thailand may not export certain varieties of Cambodian-grown, but Thai-milled, rice internationally due to fears of intellectual property violations. Cambodian Malis rice is very similar to jasmine rice, and Thailand has expressed concerns that it may infringe on the Thai-owned jasmine rice variety. The Ministry of Agriculture has been ...

Veun sai district, Ratanakkiri - Kitted out in their camouflage uniforms, military boots, belts and Ministry of Land Management baseball caps, the dozen or so student volunteers looked like a stern bunch. There was no smiling as they sat at wooden desks in an open pagoda ...

An EU scheme to boost trade with developing nations is fuelling land grabs in Cambodia, activists say, with thousands evicted from their property to make way for a booming sugar industry. Campaigners are taking their fight to European supermarkets, encouraging a boycott of Cambodian sugar, which ...

The number of cases of foot-and-mouth disease dropped significantly in first six months of 2012 compared with the three previous years, according to new report by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). However, the report's authors say the disease is still a problem for Cambodian farmers, especially owners of small farms, and can severely ...

Cambodia offers plenty of opportunities for Vietnamese exporters although there is intense competition from countries such as Thailand and China, delegates said at a conference in HCM City last Thursday. Le Quoc Phong, general director of the Binh Dien Fertiliser Group, said the Cambodian market had ...

Sitting in front of her small house in the Chey Thorn commune of Kandal province, 35-year-old Sokhun's face is etched with worry. She would like to plant crops on her four hectares of land, but she only has enough money to cultivate two of them. She could go to a microfinance finance institution ...

Samdech Prime Minister Hun Sen on June 14 ordered line ministries to distribute land to landless and real poor people to contribute to strengthening social equity system in the kingdom. "Landless and real poor people will get a plot of land with land titles according to the obvious situation," Premier said in the launching ceremony ...

Large quantities of cheap green bean exports from Thailand are driving down prices of the product in Kompong Cham province by as much as 40 percent compared to the same period last year and forcing farmers to grow other crops, officials and farmers said yesterday. The ...

After years of poor yields, the cricket farmers of Kompong Thom province have more than tripled their average catch compared with the same time last year due to early rains, an agriculture official said yesterday. Ou Bunsophoan, director of the Kompong Thom provincial agriculture department, said ...

Heavy rainfall in April and May has cut salt production by a third in Kep and Kampot provinces even though farmers extended the harvest season there by a month, farmers said yesterday. Last year, farmers were able to produce about 90,000 tons of salt on 4,500 ...

Sweet news for Cambodian palm-sugar farmers: 10 international companies are keen to import their produce, one of the Kingdom’s signature products. Sam Saroeun, president of the Kampong Speu Palm Sugar Promotion Association, said that after an exhibition in South Korea earlier this month, several international importers ...

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 ...

Rainfall during this year’s dry season and fewer farmers cultivating tobacco has resulted in a shortage of raw tobacco and a steep price increase, industry officials and farmers said yesterday. Tola Ponlu, head of corporate and regulatory affairs at British American Tobacco (BAT) in Phnom Penh, ...

Informal workers, a class that includes beer promoters, tuk tuk drivers and farmers, are among those who stand to benefit most from the upcoming trade-union law, observers say – and workers say it can’t come soon enough. Dave Welsh, country director of the American Center for ...

As the rainy season approaches, Cedac, a Cambodian agricultural organisation, is appealing to farmers this week to increase their rice yields, according to a Cedac report directed toward growers. The report established a six-step order of operations that would ensure increased output during the most intense growing ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday issued a moratorium on economic land concessions, temporarily halting a long-standing policy of granting land to private companies and those with powerful political connections that has sparked growing concerns from national and international human rights groups. The prime minister’s announcement comes ...

Export to Vietnam climbed more than 57 per cent year on year in the first quarter of 2012 as farmers looked for alternative destinations for products that went to Thailand last year. The primarily agricultural exports to Cambodia’s eastern neighbour were worth US$201.5 million, up from ...

Agricultural experts are urging Cambodian rice growers to choose seeds that can withstand drought and submersion in deep water in an attempt to make the country’s rice industry more competitive. Awareness of rice-seed selection was limited among farmers in the Kingdom, despite the importance of the ...

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 ...

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 ...

More than 1,600 tons of cassava have been stuck at the Thai-Cambodian border in Banteay Meanchey for several days because Thai officials have banned imports of the crop in an effort to support domestic prices at home, officials and exporters said yesterday. The cassava, 800 tons ...

About 500 protesters erected barricades on National Road 76a in Kratie province’s Snuol district on Saturday to protest the loss of their farmland and homes to encroachment by three agro-industry firms: Sovann Rithy, Samnang Angkor and Dai Nam Cambodia, officials said yesterday. The protest, which remained ...