Agriculture
Agricultural commodities, processing and products
Bad weather threatens to put a damper on sugar harvest
Unfavourable weather has delayed Thailand’s sugar crushing season, threatening a reduction in sugar output for the 2016/17 crop. The drop will prevent Thailand, the world’s second largest sugar exporter, from capitalising on rising global sugar prices at a time it is being challenged by Brazil ...
Vietnam’s cocoa receives “fine flavour” designation from Int’l Cocoa organisation
Viet Nam has become the second Asian country to achieve a fine flavour cocoa designation from the International Cocoa Organisation. Forty per cent of the country’s cocoa exports have received this designation. Indonesia was the first Asian country to receive the recognition in 2011, but it ...
Dry season rice plan under consideration
The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry is considering whether the figure for this year’s dry season rice plan should be revised downwards or remain stable after the last four harvests failed to reach the target. Last dry season, farmers planted only about 99,000 hectares or ...
CPF acquires China's Cofco Meat Suqian
In its latest big buy, Charoen Pokphand Foods Plc, the SET-listed flagship of agribusiness giant Charoen Pokphand Group, has acquired Cofco Meat Suqian for 976 million baht. Through Chia Tai China Investment Co, an indirect subsidiary of CPF in China, CPF will also take over ...
As labourers leave Myanmar delta, farmers struggle to mechanise
On a recent November morning, farmer U Soe Myint Aung was busy collecting rice from his harvester and loading it into bags. It is heavy work but still he knows he is lucky; with 17 acres of paddy field situated along a road in Kwinyar village, ...
The Philippines to buy rice from Myanmar
Myanmar’s Ministry of Commerce revealed that the Philippines has offered to ink a government-to-government treaty to buy rice from its fellow ASEAN country. “The Philippines has offered to buy rice. More detailed discussions are needed [for the treaty]. Currently, it imports rice mainly from Vietnam. ...
Foreign markets interested in Lao organic coffee
A famous chef from France has tasted the organic coffee in Pakxong district, Champassak province and agreed to place an order for the top quality beans for coffee shops in Europe including France. The order is expected to serve as a boon for the region’s ...
Farmers petition to improve conditions
The government has three months to act on issues raised in a petition submitted on December 5 to the National Assembly and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries or risk a mass protest being staged. A group of 300 people, representing 2,260 families from Svay Rieng, ...
Carrying a stranger’s child through an uncertain time
Ly Raksmey left her home in the heart of the country’s rice bowl in January and headed to a hospital on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. The 34-year-old stayed there several nights, in a facility that was better and cleaner than any hospital she had ...
Fresh push for contract farming
Frustrated with the failure of a $27 million emergency loan package to help rice farmers find a fair market price for their crop and stem the tide of smuggled paddy across the borders, Agriculture Minister Veng Sokhon is flogging a new model for the nation’s ...
