Agricultural commodities, processing and products

Debate has raged in Vietnam over the use of legal chemicals to artificially ripen fruits, after a facility in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong was caught ripening numerous immature durians this way last week. On September 1, an inspection team raided a fruit facility ...

The Mekong Delta, the rice, seafood and fruit granary of the country, is facing landslides and sinking, as it no longer receives enough silt because of limited floodwaters. “We have been living here for several generations and we have never seen such poor floodwaters until the ...

Climate change is threatening the Cambodian rice industry, and it is marginalised communities that will be worst affected unless the government takes action, according to a new study. The study’s authors, Sokuntheavy Hong and Jun Furuya, took historical climatic, socioeconomic and rice-yield data as their benchmark, ...

The Chin State government will focus on developing three main areas of the local economy over the next five years – trade, small and medium enterprises, and tourism – according to the state minister for development, electricity and industry. Local officials will work with the Union ...

About 40,000 Battambang rice-farming families already suffering steep losses from a severe drought are at risk of seeing their crops wiped out entirely by devastating floods as late seasonal rains start to kick in. A drought that meteorologists have blamed on the tail-end of an El ...

Champassak province farmers will be supported in planting thousands of hectares of cashew nut trees after the provincial Administration Office gave the go ahead for a US$9 million Korean project. Deputy Director of the provincial Agriculture and Forestry Department, Mr Viengsay Sipraphone, told Vientiane Times on ...

Cambodia’s beleaguered rice sector convened an emergency meeting on August 16 to tackle falling rice exports and help rice millers currently in financial doldrums due to severe shortage of funds to buy harvested rice from farmers to be milled for export. The Kingdom’s rice exports fell by ...

Along the banks of the Lancang in Yunnan, bananas grown from the river’s water are part of a complex network of national trade. Luc Forsyth and Gareth Bright have set out on a journey to follow the Mekong river from sea to source, The Diplomat will ...

Building more dams along the Mekong River will destroy the livelihoods of millions of people, according to a report commissioned by the Vietnamese government. It also says plans to construct new dams will damage crops with salt water intrusion, particularly in the south where the Mekong ...

Rice is an important crop and staple food in the Southeast Asian region; however, the growing pressures of our changing world pose difficulties on its production. Five years of irrigated rice cultivation research reached its pinnacle at the Final LEGATO Conference, which took place from 6 ...