Agriculture and fishing
Thai Government unveils assistance for farmers
Thai Deputy Prime Minister Somkid Jatusripitak has instructed the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives to extend assistance to farmers in two phases. Keep reading ...
Farmers cheer as Vietnam inks deal to export straw to Japan for cow feed
Rice straw, which is usually treated as waste and burned after each harvest in Vietnam, will become a valuable export product for the country next year. A new agreement signed on 18 November in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho allows the state-owned Song Hau Collective ...
Vietnam, New Zealand sign four agreements
Vietnamese and New Zealand businesses signed four agreements on 15 November during the official visit by New Zealand Prime Minister John Key to Vietnam. The four business-to-business arrangements – between Global Trust Alliance, AsureQuality and Vinamilk, Airways International and the Vietnam Air Traffic Management Corporation, Airways International ...
Indonesia opens trials of Thais accused of enslaving fishermen
An Indonesian court has begun hearing trials of five Thais and an Indonesian charged with human trafficking connected with slavery in the seafood industry. The suspects were arrested in the remote island village of Benjina in May after the slavery was revealed by The Associated Press ...
Cambodian PM calls for drought aid preparations
Prime Minister Hun Sen has called on local authorities and government ministries to be ready to distribute water to farmers around the country due to the ongoing shortage in Cambodia’s reservoirs. “Drought . . . has been threatening our agricultural production, therefore relevant authorities and ministries have to ...
Thai Deputy PM insists on using administrative order in rice cases
Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam has reiterated the government is not bullying ex-PM Yingluck Shinawatra when it demands compensation from her for damages from the rice-pledging programme using using the 1996 administrative tort law instead of the Civil Code. Damages can be claimed in one of the ...
Auctions of rotten rice to begin this month
The Thai government will begin auctioning 2 million tonnes of rotten rice by the end of November, looking to offload stockpiles of the staple grain built up under the rice-pledging programme. The world’s second biggest rice exporter after India is holding about 13 million tonnes of ...
Women in central Vietnam work hard at sea to keep families afloat
In the coastal Hoang Hoa District in the central province of Thanh Hoa, fishing is no longer a male preserve like it is in most places. Hundreds of women, many of whom suffered from severe seasickness once, accompany their husbands out to sea to make their ...
Vietnam sees 44,000 cases of hand-foot-mouth disease
The Ministry of Health has reported 44,000 cases of hand-foot-mouth disease nationwide this year, including five fatalities, all in the south. “The number of cases is down 30 percent from last year,” Tran Dac Phu, director of the ministry’s Centre for Preventive Health, said. Keep reading ...
Better Rice initiative to help Mekong farmers
About 3,000 farmers from three Mekong Delta provinces will benefit from a project called Better Rice Initiative Asia that has been launched in Can Tho City. Carried out as part of the Integrated Coastal Management Programme, the project aims to promote private-public partnerships along the rice ...