Agriculture

The newly appointed minister of land management and urban planning, Chea Sophara, has announced a working group to handle petitions and complaints lodged by land dispute victims. “The working group has the duty to meet and receive related petitions from protesters, coordinate and solve issues, suggest ...

The Lao National Rubber Association will be established sometime this year in order to help provide a sustainable income for rubber growers. Many rubber growers, especially in the northern provinces, have been struggling with the low price of rubber on the world market and the limited ...

Taing Chhung Ngy, director of market promotion at rice exporter LBN Angkar (Kampuchea), said that March’s sub-par performance was just the first indicator that the sector’s growth was decelerating. The decreasing amount of rice exports in March shows that the issues that rice millers and exporters ...

No more state land will be released under concession for planting rice, coffee, rubber, cassava or maize in Champassak province, as most areas suited to agriculture are already being utilised. Champassak agricultural authorities in Laos advised that prospective investors should go to the province of Saravan ...

A 30-month study by Vietnamese researchers on the impact of 11 proposed hydroelectric dams in the Lower Mekong Basin has found that the economic damage to Cambodia alone will be worth some $450 million per year. According to the researchers, the Mekong River at Kratie could, ...

The El Nino weather phenomenon has played havoc with crops across Southeast Asia and beyond. Thailand, the world’s second-largest sugar exporter, will ship 20% less of the sweetener to international markets this year than last, and farmers fear the damage already inflicted on young cane ...

Many local farmers in Laos’s Phongsaly province are shifting to plant cardamom, after earning lucrative income from growing this crop and selling it to Chinese traders. Some families earned as much as 40 million kip per year from growing cardamom, which enabled them to send their ...

Vietnam plans to gradually reduce rice production and switch to other more profitable crops, a plan that experts say makes sense since the country grows so much paddy and is a massive exporter of the unprofitable crop. The National Assembly’s Economic Committee recently agreed with the ...

Demand for Kampong Speu palm sugar has surged, with orders already up 70 per cent this year, as appetite for the premium organic sugar product grows, boosting its price. Orders for 260 tonnes of the palm sugar have been placed this year, compared with 150 tonnes ...

Drought and saltwater intrusion in Vietnam’s southern and central regions will persist through April, according to experts. Nguyen Dang Quang, a drought expert at the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting, said at a Monday forum in Hanoi that the intense El Nino phenomenon from last year ...