Agriculture
Agricultural production
New community fisheries project to preserve Mekong's biodiversity

A new community fisheries project in the Mekong River was launched in Vientiane on August 28 with the Department of Livestock and Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry agreeing to cooperate with the Worldwide Fund for Nature. A memorandum of understanding was signed by the DLF’s Deputy ...
Battambang rice-farming families fear floods

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 ...
Bananas on the Lancang: grown in Yunnan, destined for Shanxi

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 ...
Rice cultivation in Southeast Asia: 5 years of lessons learned by LEGATO
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 ...
Board of CRF seeks a double term

Just a month since their election, the leaders of the nation’s apex rice industry body have cast a motion to extend their terms – a move some have greeted with suspicion. On August 12, the board of directors of the Cambodian Rice Federation announced it ...
Smallholder farmers to face land shortage, study finds

They will need land!, a report commissioned by the NGO Mekong Region Land Governance, predicts that by 2030, the amount of land required to sustain Cambodia’s smallholder farmer population will have increased by anywhere from 10 to 64 per cent of 2015 levels, or 320,600 ...
Laos' thirst for Mekong River dams imperils fishing, farming

Dismissing its neighbors’ pleas, impoverished Laos is rapidly building a Mekong River dam that threatens fisheries crucial to millions of Southeast Asia’s poorest people. Landlocked Laos is Southeast Asia’s poorest state, and all its neighbors far exceed its population of 7 million. But by virtue ...
Poor local showing at Phnom Penh’s agro fair
Cambodia’s biggest agriculture industry event of the year received a cool response on its first day as turnout from local agro-businesses was low and overseas suppliers struggled to find potential buyers for the latest agricultural products. The Agriculture, Livestock and Aqua-fisheries Exposition was held at Phnom ...
Monster sugar mill eats through sugarcane supply

Just three months since starting production, Cambodia’s largest sugar mill is sitting idle due to a shortage of its primary input sugarcane, a provincial Agriculture Ministry official said on August 7. Poeung Trida, director of the Preah Vihear Agricultural Department, said Rui Feng (Cambodia) International Company’s ...
Miles to go

Though foreign investment is soaring and GDP is expected to grow by at least 8% this year and next, both are from a tiny base. Before the army seized power, Myanmar had been one of the world’s leading rice exporters and one of Asia’s wealthiest ...