Agriculture and fishing

The Myanmar navy has seized 49 trawlers caught illegally fishing in Myanmar waters since 2013, parliament heard on 30 November. Deputy Minister for Livestock, Fisheries and Rural Development U Khin Maung Aye told MPs eight of the boats were from Thailand and the rest were local. ...

A three-year investigation into slavery on Thailand’s fishing boats has uncovered a well-oiled system of trafficking, abuse and exploitation in the southern port of Kantang, leading to eight arrests this month, a campaign group said on 30 November. The owner of a fishing company, three enforcers ...

Migrants processing Thai chicken for its biggest export market, Europe, face widespread abuse by their employers, partly because foreign auditors have focused on food safety rather than workers’ conditions, researchers said on 25 November. Chicken is set to become the world’s most consumed meat, within the ...

A Thai ship has been caught selling oil illegally to a Vietnamese fishing boat in southwestern waters, the Vietnam Coast Guard said in a statement.   V.Lucky with five Thai crewmen was carrying 170,000 liters of diesel and pumping the oil to a Vietnamese fishing boat that ...

With the slowdown in domestic auto sales ebbing and strong exports, Thai automobile production is expected to reach 2 million units next year, the Federation of Thai Industries projects. Surapong Paisitpatanapong, a spokesman for the FTI’s automotive industry club, said the production in 2016 likely will grow ...

Nestle, the world’s largest food company, has acknowledged that it is almost certain that seafood bought from Thailand by itself and other large Western firms is produced by what are effectively modern-day slaves, many of them Cambodian. In a report, released by Nestlé on 23 November, ...

Some individual sugarcane growers in Savannakhet province now owe the milling company as much as 174 million kip following their poor harvests, it was recently revealed. According to a workshop on reducing debt risks for farmers in Vientiane, some families in Savannakhet’s Xaybouly district are in ...

Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Somsavat Lengsavad, and other senior officials last week visited Nongbok district, Khammuan province for the promotion of agricultural production to ensure food security and a commercial basis. The delegation was warmly welcomed by the provincial authorities, especially the agriculture development promotion company ...

As the weather pattern known as El Niño threatens to wreak havoc on climactic conditions across the globe, the Cambodian government has warned that higher-than-usual temperatures, which already sparked droughts this year, will cause next year’s rainy season to be even shorter. What’s more, the heat ...

Hundreds of people working at six different factories in Kandal province’s 7NG Special Economic Zone fainted on 20 November, with most blaming a pesticide that was believed to have caused a separate mass-fainting incident in the area a day earlier. Un Yong, Khsach Kandal district’s deputy ...