Biofuel crops

The Land Ministry will meet with the three companies at the center of the decade-long land dispute in Koh Kong province this week in an attempt to finally resolve the villagers’ grievances.​ In a letter made available to the public on January 18, the ministry’s ...

With the start of the dry harvest season for cassava kicking off, farmers are calling for the government to support the struggling sector with initiatives to address recurring capital shortages and market volatility. Sum Heang, head of the Pailin Cassava Association, which represents 52 cassava-growing ...

Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith has urged the business and public sectors in Laos and Thailand to open their hearts to investment and cooperation. He made the comment at the Lao-Thai Business Forum 2017 in Vientiane on January 16, organised by the Lao National Chamber of ...

Ethanol shortage concerns in Thailand have subsided on the good sugar yield from the latest sugar cane crop, providing abundant molasses for the ethanol industry, says a senior industrial official. Thai SugarMillers Corporation Ltd, which includes all Thai 52 sugar factories, said the current 2016/17 ...

Vietnam in 2016 saw a high farm produce trade surplus of $7.6 billion, but big difficulties are still ahead, including returning protectionism with Brexit and US President-elect Donald Trump. Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Xuan Cuong said at a press conference on January ...

Local cassava producers still do not fully understand the process of obtaining a sanitary and phytosanitary certification, a necessity for those exporting their produce to Thailand. Department of Agriculture deputy director-general Hean Vanhan said that there were no barriers for local cassava vendors to export to ...

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha wants all existing state rice stocks to be disposed of within this year. Wiboonlasana Ruamraksa, permanent secretary for commerce, said Gen Prayut, who chaired the national rice policy committee’s meeting on January 9, has ordered officials handling state rice sales to ...

Sugar output in the 2015-16 crop was 1.23 million tonnes, a year-on-year drop of 12.7 percent, said Phạm Quốc Doanh, Chairman of the Việt Nam Sugarcane and Sugar Association, at a seminar in HCM City last week of sugar producers, distributors and consumers. Together with 185,000 ...

The Ministry of Commerce plans to push Kep salt to obtain geographical indication status thanks to the natural quality of salt in the province. Commerce Minister Pan Sorasak said the ministry was reviewing the possibility of GI status for salt farmed in Kep because the province ...

Forbes’ annual catalog of the country’s wealthiest people reads like a who’s who of the palm oil industry tycoons and represents an example of wealth being unusually concentrated to a few oligarchs. Fourteen of the 32 Indonesian billionaires identified by Forbes magazine are palm oil tycoons, having accumulated ...