Cambodia’s promising animal feed sector will soon see support from a big pharmaceutical manufacturer which is now studying local demand for animal healthcare – a nearly untapped market.
“We intend to introduce animal health business in Cambodia for our farm products and feed mills,” Khalid Baig, Bayer’s... continue
The Ministry of Commerce has released figures showing Cambodia’s export of fishery goods including fresh and dried fish products have decreased drastically in the first quarter of the year, though several government officials viewed the figures with scepticism.
Cambodia exported 49.9 tonnes of fish products in the first quarter of the year a sizable drop from the 620.14 tonnes exported over the same period in 2012, the ministry’s data showed. …
Om Savath, executive director of Cambodia’s Fish Action Coalition Team, said that in general fishery production had declined this year, as the government had reduced the number of fishing lots throughout the country. …
Small pig farmers are struggling to stay in business as illegal imports of pigs from neighbouring countries rise, squeezing them out of the market, industry insiders say.
Srun Peu, deputy director of the Cambodia Pig Farmers Association, an organisation with 4,000 members, said the increase in illegal pig imports from Vietnam was negatively affecting local production, especially on small farms. …
“There are 400 to 500 pigs imported illegally to Cambodia every day,” Srun Peu said.
“It is affecting not only our local pig farmers but also the health of consumers, as there are no quality checks.” …
According to Peu, the Kingdom consumes 4,000 to 5,000 live pigs a day, but local producers can supply only about 3,000 pigs a day. …
The price of meat will be higher during Khmer New Year, with prices rising between 2,000 riel and 3,000 riel ($0.50 and $0.75) per kilogram, according to vendors.
Som Sreymom, a pork vendor at Kandal market, said the price of pork would hit as much as 20,000 riel a kilogram, up from its current 17,000 riel. …
Cambodia’s first-ever agricultural census is under way, tasked with addressing the lack of reliable statistical information on one of the Kingdom’s most crucial economic sectors. …
The census is being taken by the government with assistance from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in two rounds. The first round runs through May 31. After the July elections, the second round will commence in August and run through September. …
According to FAO Cambodia, in the first round of the census, an estimated 2.7 million households engaged in agricultural activities will be identified. In the second, five per cent of these households will be interviewed about their agricultural activities, before experts eventually examine the data. …
Betagro (Cambodia) readies for the construction of its new feed mill in Phnom Penh SEZ.
The feed mill is to be constructed in the capital’s Special Economic Zone, located 12km from the city center.
The company is investing USD$17.2 million in the new project. …
The plant construction will start in May, and is expected to be ready for completion sometime in 2014. The feed mill will supply Betagro’s swine operation in the country,as well as the country’s livestock industry. …
The company is also conducting feasibility tests on the opening of a processing plant and Betagro Shop in the country. Betagro first entered Cambodia through a sale[s] office in 2008. Betagro (Cambodia) currently imports 3,600 tonnes of animal feed per month from Thailand to sell in Cambodia. …
The production of animal feed may be lucrative for family-run businesses, but production is failing to meet the local market’s demand, said industry experts.
Ros Limhy, National Agriculture adviser for the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries’ Tonle Sap Poverty Reduction and Smallholder Development project, and animal welfare and production specialist, said that despite a growing number of local livestock companies, most feeds in Cambodia are imported and costs are higher than local production costs. …
Cambodian crocodile farmers prefer selling young live crocodiles directly rather than raising crocodiles and selling their skins for export as they believe there is no market, despite officials encouraging crocodile farming for skin exports.
Heng Chheng, a crocodile farmer from Battambang, has raised crocodiles since 1984. He said this year he planned to hatch about 10,000 young crocodiles, which would produce around 9,000 babies. …
Top officials from the Livestock Development Department inspected the work of the animal quarantine center in Sa Kaew province, located on the shared border with Cambodia. Officials at the quarantine center, situated at Ban Khlong Luek permanent border point, now implements such measures as spraying antiseptics on every vehicle passing through the border point and banning the bringing in of all birds. All eggs are also being banned from entering. …
Cambodia, a Southeast Asian country with 15 million inhabitants, has begun to embrace intensive livestock production despite numerous obstacles. The industry heavily relies on the import of genetics, soybean meal, fish meal, additives, medicines and vaccines. A major constraint preventing producers from taking up intensive farming is the lack of access to electricity in rural areas. …
CP Cambodia is by far the largest supplier of complete feed, breeding stock, live animals, processed meat and ready-to-eat products. The company supplies 42,000 tonnes/month of feed for all livestock species, including the recently completed plant in Kandal province which has a capacity of 5,000 tonnes/month. Other players include Betagro which imports 3,500 tonnes from across the Thai border. It plans to invest US$500 million in a new mill with a capacity of 12,000 tonnes/month. …
Traditionally Cambodia’s consumers have a preference for pork, which explains why the livestock market is dominated by pig production. Nevertheless the country relies on the import of breeding and finishing stock. Cambodia’s agriculture ministry estimates that total demand for pigs in the country is 3.25 million head. With a domestic production of 2.4 million, officials say, the need to import pigs will continue in the near future. Structural problems such as high interest rates, endemic disease, market volatility, and technological backwardness prevent the industry from meeting local demand over the near term. A substantial part of the live imports come from Thailand, but around one-third of all live animals imported from this country are re-exported to Vietnam. …
At present, it is estimated that chicken eggs account for only 40% of the total egg market. The total chicken layer population is estimated at 800,000 hens. Major players in this segment are CP Cambodia, Ngee Heng, Master Feed and SCF.
While the ministries of health and agriculture are taking measures to stem the spread of avian influenza – which claimed its fifth victim in just three weeks on Thursday – a lack of compensation for poultry owners affected by culling is limiting their effectiveness, officials said yesterday.
Last week, a 5-year-old girl became the second person to succumb to the H5N1 virus in Takeo province’s Prey Kabbas district, where authorities are trying to detect the disease in poultry before it passes to more human in the area. …
This lack of detection was partly due to a lack of resources at the Agriculture Ministry, but also to farmers’ fears of their livestock being culled. …
Hong Kong has banned egg imports from Cambodia due to the country’s recent avian influenza outbreak, which claimed four lives last month. …
“Hong Kong does not import live poultry or poultry meat from Cambodia, but 170,000 poultry eggs were imported from there last year,” the site says. …
Sonny Krishnan, communications officer for the World Health Organization in Cambodia, said yesterday that the ban was “understandable” but probably unnecessary, since Cambodia’s egg exports came from commercial farms and not the “backyard” sources of the outbreak. …
Hundreds of residents in five villages in southern Cambodia have been deprived of their sole source of water as a massive pond in their area has dried up, villagers said.
The affected villagers of Sre Ronnong commune in Takeo Province’s Tram Kork district have been buying water from businessmen since the pond could not be used from late last year, with each household forking out about 15,000 riels (about U.S. $4) per week for the vital resource. …
Cambodia and China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Tuesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on strengthening bilateral communication and cooperation in agriculture.
The deal was inked between Lord Reasmey, secretary-general of Cambodia’s Ministry of Agriculture, and Zhang Mingpei, director- general of Department of Agriculture of Guangxi (DAG), under the presence of Cambodian Agriculture Minister Chan Sarun.
According to the MoU, both sides are willing to improve and strengthen the communication on improved crop/plant varieties and technology. …
High demand for beef, particularly during the Islamic Qurban festival which ended yesterday, caused beef prices to almost double compared with the same period last year, according to Islamic leaders and officials.
Him Khortieth, IKatan Mahabbah Muslimin’s (IMAN) representative in Cambodia, said the association planned to share out over 100 cows for free which were originally sold at a double price to Cham communities in at least two provinces, Kampong Cham and Kampong Chhnang, during the Qurban festival. …
He also said that for cows aged more than two years, the price was more than US$200 each last year but climbed to about $400 at this time.
He noted that the price increase resulted from the large-scale exports to Vietnam and said they had fed the cows less sufficiently then before. …
Toxic runoff from small-scale gold mining operations in Battambang province killed two cattle on Wednesday, the latest casualties from pollution in the area led to the closing of more than 100 mines earlier this year. …
Officials from the provincial mines department yesterday said they were unaware of the recent of the recent cattle deaths, but did not say if they would investigate. …
Cambodians like pork. The average Cambodian consumes almost 9.29 kg of the meat each year, and local farmers supplied about 2 million pigs, more than 90 percent of the domestic demand, in 2008.
But the market for small-scale pig farmers has flown.
Live pig prices have fallen 53.55 percent to about 7,000 riel, or $1.75,per kg in just one year as cheaper pork imported from Thailand has forced local companies to drop prices to compete. Since last year, 30 percent of all subsistence pig farmers in Cambodia have called it quits in terms of rising swine for sale, and many more farmers will follow if the flood of cheap pork from Thailand continues, said Prathna Preap, a swine market expert at the U.S. government’s development agency, USAID. …
Whereas most developed countries have safeguards in place to protect local industries, Cambodia does not. There is a draft law at the Council of Ministers to tackle the issue, but if it ever passes, expert s question whether it would ever be enforced. …
Prime Minister Hun Sen has called investors from China’s Anhui province to invest in numerous sectors across Cambodia in an effort to spur two-way trade between the Kingdom and China in order accomplish their joint target of US$5 billion in trade by 2015.
Meanwhile, Cambodia’s opposition party claims the government should perform strict checks before approving any investments that would impact on the economy and the people.
Last week, Chinese-based Ruijin Investment Holding limited, from Hainan province in China, announced investments in three projects in rice farming, tourism and a cattle ranch, worth a total of $6.5 billion, while Shantui, from Shantong province and one of the largest manufacturers of heavy construction machinery, sought to invest in rice farming and rubber plantations in Kampong Cham province. …
According to data from the Chinese embassy in Phnom Penh, bilateral trade between Cambodia and China reached $2.5 billion last year, up 73.5 per cent from a year earlier.
PHNOM PENH — China’s Hainan Ruijin Investment Holding Group planned to invest in rice plantation, cow farm and tourism development in Cambodia, the group’s chairman Pan Xiaoping said Wednesday.
Pan said during a meeting with Heng Samrin, president of Cambodia’s National Assembly that his company decided to establish an overseas branch office in Cambodia to focus on the three projects.
Pan did not say when the projects will be started.
Heng Samrin pledged full support for those projects, which he said will be good to boost the development of Cambodia’s economy.
“Foreign investment is a key factor to accelerate economic development in Cambodia,” he said.
Consumer prices in Phnom Penh grew just 1.8 percent year-on-year in the month of June, the lowest increase in almost two years, as food and gas prices remained stable, according to figures released yesterday by the Ministry of Planning.
In its monthly inflation report, the ministry said that the price of gas dropped 2.7 percent in June compared to the same month in 2011, while the commodity dropped 6.3 percent from May to June.
Food and non-alcoholic beverage prices increased by just 2.3 percent over the 12-month period. Rice increased 4.4 percent year-to-year, while milk, cheese and eggs increased by 4.1 percent. The price of meat increased 2.5 percent over the same period. …
