After the EU decided to impose tariffs on Cambodia’s rice exports from January, Vietnam agreed this week to expand its import quota for the Kingdom’s rice to 300,000 tonnes. Vietnam’s actions come as the Chinese government late last night agreed to increase its import quota for the Kingdom’s rice to 400,000 tonnes this year from the previous year’s 300,000 tonnes.

Keep reading …

The post Vietnam increases its quota for Kingdom’s rice to 300K tonnes first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

More than 2,060ha of rice in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta have been damaged due to recent floods, according to the Directorate of Water Resources under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. In An Giang province, over 1,270ha of rice were destroyed, while Kien Giang suffered losses in 316ha, Dong Thap 182ha, and Long An 24ha. 

Keep reading …

The post Mekong Delta floods inundate over 2,000ha of rice first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

The National League for Democracy-led government is set to sign its first ever government-to-government (G-to-G) rice export bilateral agreement, according to the commerce ministry. The country is likely to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to export rice to Bangladesh in early September.

Keep reading

The post First rice export bilateral agreement signed first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

Around 1 million rai of rice plantation in the Northeast was destroyed by the recent flood, but it is unlikely to have any severe effect on Thai rice production and export, with shippers and industry officials keeping rice export forecasts unchanged at 10 million tonnes.

Keep reading

The post Despite floods, rice output forecasts unchanged first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry is considering whether the figure for this year’s dry season rice plan should be revised downwards or remain stable after the last four harvests failed to reach the target. Last dry season, farmers planted only about 99,000 hectares or 88 percent of the area targeted, which represented a reduction of 2,210 hectares on the previous crop. The figures were reported to the National Assembly meeting last month by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. The major factors influencing the decline in dry season rice plantings included the fact that large numbers of rice farmers, especially those in the northern parts, shifted to growing commercial small crops such as beans, sweetcorn, melons, pumpkins, chilies, eggplants and sweet potatoes. Those farmers reported that their reasons for shifting included lower capital costs as well as better financial returns on their labour. The crops also require less water to supply production and produce three or four times a year. Cold weather and lack of water from irrigation systems are important issues affecting dry season rice production, according to the Department of Agriculture.

Keep reading

The post Dry season rice plan under consideration first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

On a recent November morning, farmer U Soe Myint Aung was busy collecting rice from his harvester and loading it into bags. It is heavy work but still he knows he is lucky; with 17 acres of paddy field situated along a road in Kwinyar village, in Kangyidaunt township, he can afford to own a harvester. Most farmers in Ayeyarwady Region, the country’s ‘rice bowl’ and home to some 10 million people, lack enough land and capital to afford use of mechanical harvesters, while their uneven plots are often difficult to access with the machines. The lack of mechanised farming has become a pressing problem, many farmers and officials here said, as manual labour is in short supply in the delta region, where farming remains labour intensive. “Due to labour shortages farmers can’t plant their paddies in a timely manner,” U Soe Myint Aung said. “Also, the harvest can be delayed and the crops could be damaged by rains; such paddy doesn’t get a good price.”

Keep reading

The post As labourers leave Myanmar delta, farmers struggle to mechanise first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

Myanmar’s Ministry of Commerce revealed that the Philippines has offered to ink a government-to-government treaty to buy rice from its fellow ASEAN country. “The Philippines has offered to buy rice. More detailed discussions are needed [for the treaty]. Currently, it imports rice mainly from Vietnam. Its market has an enormous demand for rice,” said Khin Maung Lwin, a senior official from the ministry. The Philippines would become an excellent market for rice when the deal was made, the civil servant said. It also offered to buy rice from Myanmar in early 2016 but failed to make a deal. As there was a price gap between Myanmar and Vietnam, the latter apparently won the tender for a rice deal. Myanmar exported more than 80 per cent of rice to China through the Muse border centre. When Muse was attacked by rebels in late November, rice traders said they were preparing to export more rice by sea.
Myanmar exports rice to 33 countries and more consignments went to the African market this year.

Keep reading

The post The Philippines to buy rice from Myanmar first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

The government has three months to act on issues raised in a petition submitted on December 5 to the National Assembly and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries or risk a mass protest being staged. A group of 300 people, representing 2,260 families from Svay Rieng, Prey Veng, Kandal, Takeo, Preah Vihear, Tbong Khmum and Kampot provinces, handed over their petition urging the government to improve conditions to help farmers cope with the low prices of produce by setting aside $400 million for the agricultural sector. According to the petition, farmers were faced with a lack of access to markets which are now flooded with imported rice and vegetables from Vietnam and Thailand. Farmers are also being forced to sell their produce below market value or risk not selling any, they said. They also cited a lack of technical expertise in the production and processing of local produce. “I request that the government not import vegetables and rice from abroad. Please value our local products,” said Hul Douk, a farmer from Prey Veng province’s Kanhchriech district.

Keep reading

The post Farmers petition to improve conditions first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

Ly Raksmey left her home in the heart of the country’s rice bowl in January and headed to a hospital on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. The 34-year-old stayed there several nights, in a facility that was better and cleaner than any hospital she had slept in before. When Ms. Raksmey, who asked that her real name be withheld because she wished to keep her involvement private, returned to her husband and three children in Prey Veng province, she was pregnant with the child of two people she had never met—and likely never will. Last year was a bad one for rice, Ms. Raksmey explained during an interview at a KFC fast-food outlet along Russian Boulevard in late September. In fact, the last few years had been bad for farmers in the southern province. “The rice these days isn’t so good,” she said. “The water has dried. We don’t sell any rice anymore, my family. We only farm it to eat. I sell a few pigs—mother pigs and babies. When the water does come, it floods the farmland and ruins the rice.”

Keep reading

The post Carrying a stranger’s child through an uncertain time first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

It has been over two months since the government made available a $27 million emergency loan package to the beleaguered rice sector, yet only 5 percent of the funds have been disbursed. Officials from the state-owned bank in charge of issuing the loans claim the low figure is proof that rice millers’ claims of facing imminent bankruptcy were overblown, while rice industry players charge it is because the lending comes with onerous strings attached. Kao Thach, CEO of the Rural Development Bank, insisted on November 24 that the rice industry was not, as it has claimed, in dire need of capital. “The RDB expected that loan applications, especially for fragrant rice harvesting, would have increased, but now with 40 percent of the fragrant rice paddy harvest completed, the application rate has not increased,” he said. “Based on the flow of loan requests, the rice sector is still not facing a shortage of capital.” In September, the government transferred its share of the $27 million package to RDB so that the bank could disburse loans to rice millers that would allow them to purchase rice paddy from farmers.

Keep reading

The post Gov’t rice loans find few takers first appeared on Open Development Mekong.