Double

The best news on rice production in Cambodia may well be from an official news source, the Agence Kampuchea Presse (Jun. 5):

'Demand for organic rice is on the upturn both in domestic and international markets, according to local media report.
The report examined the trend grounding on positive performance of a leading local non-governmental organisation known as CEDAC – Cambodian Centre for Study and Development in Agriculture – that promotes organic rice growing and exports.
CEDAC Executive Director Mr. Sam Vitou was quoted claiming that his organisation has so far purchased almost 5,000 tons of organic rice from farmers – the amount that doubles last year, thanks to the increasing demand for the product.
According to the executive director, the increase has been driven by both local and international markets; and the current biggest markets for the organic rice are the United States of America and Hong Kong of China.
Inspired by the trend, CEDAC is expected to encourage some 2,500 farmer households in ten provinces of Cambodia to produce 12,000 tons of organic rice for 2017-2018.
The exporting organic rice, emphasised the source, undergoes standardised technical testing for harmful chemical substances in order to guarantee the product quality among the customers'.

Meanwhile officialdom is still in a quandary as to what to call Cambodian rice. Or better said, how to market Cambodian rice produce. The Khmer Times (Jun. 5):

'Government task forces will meet this week to finalise a single brand under which Cambodian rice will be exported.
Those at the meeting will include the Cambodia Rice Federation, the Agriculture Ministry and the Commerce Ministry.
“We don’t know when the exact date for registration will be because they just applied for registration last week,” said Op Rady, director of the intellectual property rights department of the Ministry of Commerce.
“We have talked several times. The CRF wants to use the name Angkor Malis but the Agriculture Ministry suggested it reconsider the name.
Hean Vanhan, director-general the general directorate of agriculture, said registration of a single rice brand was the duty of the commerce ministry.
Agriculture officials said Cambodia had more than 10 varieties of fragrant rice, and should not single out one as a single brand.
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He suggested that a non-specific ‘Angkor Rice,’ with the specific variety written underneath would help clear up the confusion and prevent people from thinking they were buying a specific rice variety when they might be buying a different premium rice'.

Rice storage means good. The Khmer Times (Jun. 7):

'Rice millers can expect a certain degree of price stability in their exports with the construction of a 200,000-tonne capacity rice warehouse and a 3,000-tonne silo facility in Battambang province'.

But is the following still good? The Phnom Penh Post (Jul. 3):

'A proposal for a massive warehouse and silo that has attracted two Chinese investors aims to fill the Kingdom’s conspicuous gap in paddy rice storage capacity, which still falls 60 percent short of the level needed for the country to achieve its goal of 1 million tonnes of annual rice exports.
Private Chinese firms Jilin Province Investment Group Co Ltd and Jilin Tianzhong Agriculture Development Co Ltd signed a memorandum of understanding on Thursday with local conglomerate Soma Group to build a “huge” storage facility to serve Cambodia’s rice producers.
According to Hun Lak, vice president of the Cambodia Rice Federation, the companies will conduct a feasibility study to determine the location and investment size of the initial storage complex, with Battambang and Takeo provinces favoured. Additional storage facilities could be developed in other areas, he said'.

And then some news on how international donors keep the ball rolling. The Cambodia Daily (Jun. 21):

'A World Bank subsidiary will soon start training 2,000 farmers contracted to supply a leading Cambodian rice exporter on how to meet an international farming standard.
The International Finance Corporation will work with Amru Rice over three years to implement the U.N.-led Sustainable Rice Platform (SRP) in Kompong Cham province, the two organizations announced on Tuesday in a statement.
Farmers will be scored on 46 criteria, including record keeping, seed variety, pesticide choice, water management and the use of child labor.
Hean Vanhorn, deputy director-general at the Agriculture Ministry, said it was the first time the standard was being introduced to the sector, and explained that the project could help contract farmers market their paddy rice'.

Bird conservation and dry season rice cropping. A very interesting article though the obvious outcome may well be depressing. Conservation.com (Jun. 20):

'I’d been in Cambodia six weeks, and this was one of the last villages left to survey. I was researching the impact of local communities’ livelihoods on a critically endangered bustard species; the Bengal florican (Houbaropsis bengalensis). Fewer than 1,500 florican remain globally, over 60% of which seasonally reside in the grasslands of Kampong Thom province, central Cambodia.
Male florican are distinctive. If you’re lucky, between February and April you may spy their beautiful black and white bodies leaping 30 metres into the air; performing to impress shy females. However, opportunities for encountering such moments are increasingly rare. In recent decades florican have undergone dramatic population declines, initially driven by over-hunting, but now by widespread habitat loss, primarily due to rice cultivation.
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It was believed dry season rice was typically grown between December and March. However, my interviews revealed that nearly half of all dry season rice farmers now farm two crops of rice a year, extending the rice cultivation season into June. This is a relatively recent and previously undocumented trend, with significant implications for florican, who visit grasslands from February to July. Expansion of dry season rice not only means less habitat is available for floricans to forage and breed, but it also reduces the time for which it is available. Floricans return to the same large territories each year to mate. This means the miniscule populations that remain are likely returning to increasingly sub-optimal habitat.
In addition, around 95% of the dry season rice farmers I spoke to said that they use fertiliser or pesticides on their crop. Many have to borrow money in order to do so, and sometimes if their crops fail or the market collapses, they may find themselves indebted to credit lenders, forced to sell land to clear their debts. There are also considerable environmental and ecological implications. Agro-chemicals not only reduce food availability, but they typically include substances banned in the West, including DDT, a chemical known to cause egg thinning in birds'.

Peace
Thailand is in the throes of the aftermath of the democratically endorsed and highly popular rice pledging scheme, which current junta uses as a stick to thrash it's democratic predecessor. The Asian Correspondent (Jun. 28):

'IN an editorial this week, Bangkok-based daily The Nation issued a crucial reminder to the country – let cooler heads prevail when the curtains close on Yingluck Shinawatra’s rice subsidy case.
The popular English-language broadsheet’s editors said the outcome of the case, whichever way it goes, has the potential of turning what they described as a period of “suspenseful peace” into one of major uproar'.

Oddly it ends the article thus:

'The only way to avoid turmoil and this “vicious cycle” of unrest, they said, is by calmly looking at evidence from both sides with open minds before passing judgment'.

As if the Thai judiciary normally functions differently.

The Bangkok Post (Jul. 1) mentions on-subject:

'The Public Sector Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC) has pushed forward with its investigation into allegations of corruption in the rice-pledging scheme by inviting for questioning suspects in five cases, the PACC chief says'.

Meanwhile the old crop is getting sold. Bangkok Post (Jun. 7):

'The National Rice Policy Committee has approved the 16.56-billion-baht sale of 1.66 million tonnes of old rice to auction winners, leaving only 160,000 tonnes of edible rice in the stockpile.
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Since the May 2014 coup, the military government has sold more than 14 million tonnes of old rice by auction, fetching about 130 billion baht. The Commerce Ministry plans to call for bids for old rice fit for animal feed this month, and for ethyl alcohol production next month'.

What this means for the market. The Bangkok Post (Jun 20):

'With state rice stockpiles nearly sold off and major rice-producing nations suffering bad weather, Thai rice exports are likely to hit a record high this year, say government and industry officials.
Thailand's 2017 rice exports are tipped to reach 11 million tonnes, the most ever, because of rising demand in rice-importing countries at a time that production in grower countries is falling.
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But Thai rice supply is limited because of the 2016 drought and the government's policy to encourage farmers to switch to other lucrative crops such as sugar, which has substantially cut supply from the off-season crop dropped by more than 40% from 9-10 million tonnes on average over the past few years to just 5 million tonnes this year, according to data supplied by the Agriculture Ministry'.

So what does the current regime plan? The Bangkok Post (Jun. 28):

'The cabinet yesterday approved a rice insurance scheme for the first crop of the 2017 season, worth 2 billion baht.
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The government expects the scheme to cover 25-30 million rai of rice farmland. The scheme covers six natural disasters: floods, drought, storms, cold, hail and fires'.

Foreign good
Over to Vietnam. Vietnam has it's own problems concerned with marketing their rice produce. Vietnamnet (Jun. 12):

'According to VIBIZ, the market research and analysis website owned by Global Yoilo JSC, 64 percent of rice in the domestic market is Vietnamese but is labeled as foreign rice so that sellers can make higher profits.
Meanwhile, 53 percent of consumers say they like foreign rice grown in Thailand, Cambodia and Japan.
A report of the company said of the 67 rice products in the domestic market, only 21 products are given Vietnamese names.
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“Vietnamese prefer foreign rice because they hear Thai and Japanese farmers grow rice with high technologies,” he [Nguyen Van Nam, a renowned economist, and former head of the Trade Research Institute] explained. “They have no information about how rice is grown in Vietnam.”
“Therefore, merchants give foreign names to Vietnam’s rice to sell more products,” he said, adding that Vietnam only imports rice from Cambodia and Thailand in small quantities.
Tran Duy Quy, former head of the Institute of Agricultural Genetics of Vietnam, confirmed that Vietnam has been importing rice from Cambodia and Thailand, but in small quantities. As for the so called ‘Japanese rice’, this is Vietnam’s rice labeled as Japanese rice'.

Vietnam is trying to free up it's export process. Vietnamnet (Jun 21):

'The decree, replacing Decree 109/2010/NĐ-CP on rice export and business, is expected to take effect from January 1, 2018, after which businesses will be able to engage in the free trade of rice without quantitative restrictions.
The decree also removes regulations of criteria for businesses to be eligible to export rice, as well as the floor prices set for rice shipments.
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Vo Minh Khai, director-general of Vien Phu Organic – Healthy Food Company from the southernmost province of Ca Mau, said that over the past years, rice enterprises that were small scale but produced high-quality rice had not been able to bring their products to the world market.
To export their rice, they had to depend on large companies as intermediaries. Therefore, revising the old decree would create a level-playing field for small rice export firms to proactively access the global market, Khai said.
The new document will also enable businesses to invest in producing high-quality products to compete with rivals from Thailand and Cambodia, he added'.

Likewise, the Hanoi Times (Jun. 24) reports on rice prices looking better:

'According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the demand for Vietnam’s 5 percent broken rice, has been rising, hitting 390 USD per tonne in the early days of June, against 360 USD per tonne to 380 USD per tonne in late May'.

Even without the dam future, Vietnam seems already to be vexed by Mekong upstream efforts which means less water in the delta. Vietnamnet (Jun. 20):

'According to Nguyen Nhan Quang, a river basin management expert, Thailand has had 990 more projects in the northeast on using Mekong’s water to serve irrigation in the area.
In Cambodia, the strategy on stepping up rice cultivation for export is being implemented, with the country seeking cooperation with foreign countries, mostly from China, to expand the irrigation network.In Laos, the current total irrigation area is 166,476 hectares, but the figure is expected to increase by 213,062 hectares by 2030.
As upstream countries try to expand water use, this will be a great challenge for Vietnam’s Mekong Delta'.

Into the deep
From the Phnom Penh Post (Jun. 21), an article about the downward trend for pepper growers:

'The rapid expansion of pepper cultivation in Cambodia coincides with the spice’s plummeting world prices, creating concerns that the glut of pepper ripening on vines across the Kingdom could further erode next season’s market prices and push the sector toward a collapse. Hean Vanhan, undersecretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, said large-scale planting in recent years, encouraged by the soaring prices, has significantly boosted Cambodia’s pepper production. He said total production doubled last year and has increased eight-fold since 2013, with the impact on supply magnified by similar output growth in other major pepper producing countries.
“According to our figures, the growth of pepper production has increased dramatically, but now the big concern for farmers is that the market has stagnated,” he said yesterday.
Ministry data show total pepper production rose to 20,054 tonnes this year, compared to 11,819 tonnes in 2016, and just 2,498 tonnes in 2013. More than 5,000 hectares are now cultivated with pepper, compared to just 400 hectares in 2013.
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Rothsan [Var Rothsan, adviser to the Ministry of Commerce] added that the ministry was also working on developing a new collective trademark for Cambodian pepper aimed at raising the profile of locally produced, non-GI pepper in international markets – a move that could help reduce the reliance on Vietnamese brokers to access these markets.
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Yin Sopha, executive director for Memot Dar Pepper Agriculture Development Cooperative, said the domestic farm-gate price of black pepper had fallen to $3.5 per kilo, well below the 2014 high tide mark of $10.5 per kilo. He added that the decline was driving farmers deep into debt'.

Cassava has also all the entrapment's associated with lower prices. The Phnom Penh Post (Jun. 27):

'Cassava prices in Cambodia experienced a sharp drop this month leading to heavy losses for smallholder farmers unable to quickly switch to more profitable crops and recoup their mounting losses, a provincial agriculture official said yesterday.
Faced with low prices of around 144 riel ($0.035) per kilo of fresh cassava at the beginning of the harvest season, which runs from December to April, farmers decided to delay collecting the starchy tuber, only to see prices plummet to a historical low of 108 riel ($0.026) per kilo earlier this month, explained Soy Sopath, agricultural director for Pailin province at the Ministry of Agriculture.
With a breakeven point of 180 riel ($0.044) for fresh cassava, the farmer’s fate went from bad to worse as they are now forced to sell their products at a large loss, he said.
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Cassava, which is considered to be a cash crop in Cambodia as it is rarely consumed by locals, is popular to grow as it requires less water and fertilisers, and is less prone to disease than other crops, Sopath explained. The government has made numerous attempts to wean Cambodian farmers away from cassava, yet its cultivation continues to expand.
“Farmers keep harvesting cassava because it is not a complicated crop to grow, and its price might increase next season,” he said.
However, falling prices have seen a decline in cultivation in Pailin province, the heartland of cassava cultivation where 90 percent of farmers are involved in the sector. Total cultivation in the province decreased 20 percent this season compared to last, according to Sopath, who said he expected further decline as farmers look to other more profitable crops.
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However, Soeng Sophary, spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce, explained that the Ministry of Agriculture and farmers needed to work together to collect and share information in order to better understand price trends in foreign markets so that farmers could time cassava cultivation to satisfy external demand.
“If farmers and agriculture officials cooperate and work smartly to find the right time for cultivation then they would not suffer from such heavy losses,” she said. “In order to add value to cassava, we need to have better quality standards and more technical expertise for processing it in factories.”

But not all alternatives are in the doldrums. The Phnom Penh Post (Jun. 7) reports on coconut oil.

'The Kingdom’s nascent coconut oil industry is facing a shortage of raw materials as local farmers look to make a quick profit by selling young coconuts to drink vendors rather than letting them mature and sell them to health care and cosmetics producers.
Khdib Sreymich, general manager of Coco Khmer, a Cambodia-based producer of virgin coconut oil, which also manufactures a line of coconut-based health and beauty products, said her company is forced to import coconuts from Vietnamese suppliers to meet consumer demand for the company’s products. She explained that the farmers preferred to sell the coconuts when they were young, though mature fruits, which can be sold for higher prices, are needed for coconut oil production.
According to Sreymich, domestic production can only satisfy 10 percent of the company’s demand for mature coconuts. The remaining 90 percent must be imported from Vietnam'.

And then corn. The Phnom Penh Post (Jun. 22):

'Growing demand for animal feed is driving up both the demand and price of corn, with smallholder farmers claiming the field crop offers a more stable market than cassava.
“If we look at the trends in farming, this sector [corn] has a lot more options than other crops, and is less challenging,” said Lor Reaksmey, spokesman of the Ministry of Agriculture. He added that corn, also known as maize, is needed for food consumption and animal feed mills, with high demand both in the domestic and international markets.
Corn is grown on more than 140,000 hectares in Cambodia and can be harvested twice a year, with the main areas of cultivation being Battambang, Preah Vihear and Kandal provinces. Each hectare yields about 4.5 tonnes, putting Cambodia’s total production at around 640,000 tonnes last year.
Reaksmey explained that over 60 percent of domestically produced corn is earmarked for export, with most of these shipments destined for feed mills in Thailand and Vietnam. The remainder is sold to the Kingdom’s feed mills, with a small amount purchased by local food-processing plants and retailers.
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Ministry of Agriculture data shows total corn exports reached 70,487 tonnes last year, a 25 percent increase over 2015.
Despite this rise, local production cannot satisfy the voracious appetite of the Kingdom’s 15 feed mills, said Hort Pheng, director of the Industrial Affairs Department at the Ministry of Industry and Handicrafts'.

A Chinese agrofair in Phnom Penh. Phnom Penh Post (Jun. 29):

'A major international agricultural fair that brought over 800 Chinese companies to the capital wrapped up yesterday with none of the expected investment agreements signed as Chinese investors appeared cautious about setting up agro-processing facilities in the Kingdom, organisers said.
The inaugural International Agriculture Products and Expository kicked off on June 25, drawing some 800 investors from China and 200 local firms to a four-day expo aimed at showcasing the investment potential of Cambodia’s agricultural sector.
Chea Heng, president of the Cambodia-China Development Friendship Alliance (CCDFA), one the expo’s local organisers, said several major memoranda of understanding (MoUs) had been expected during the fair, but none materialised'.

Expiration date
We've focused earlier on the banana growing rage from China which has set up shop in Laos and northern Thailand. The Vientiane Times (Jun. 10) notes that banana growing is going out of fashion as the land leasers are being held to account:

'A number of banana farms in Oudomxay province have ceased operations after their contracts expired following numerous complaints from local residents that their operations were negatively affecting the environment.
The farms are operated by 11 concession holders. Seven companies are still continuing their operations but four companies’ contracts have expired and the authorities will not renew them.
A provincial Agriculture and Forestry Department official, Mr Bounyeun Xayyaven told Vientiane Times yesterday the 11 companies had concessions and rented the land of local residents to operate their banana farms, but four of those companies had ended their work after their contracts expired.
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According to a National Assembly report in October last year, some provinces are using too many insecticides, pesticides and chemical fertilisers, but this issue did not feature in reports submitted to the Assembly.
Some people became ill and some allegedly died after pesticide was sprayed on farms, but the reports did not say where this had occurred'.