2020 was a bumper year for agriculture

Minister of Agriculture Veng Sokhon is driving a tractor. MoA

The Ministry of Agriculture is aiming to further increase the productivity of the sector by focusing on a shift to mechanisation to replace human labour.

Agriculture Minister Veng Sakhon said: “One of the priority policies of the [ministry] is the development of agricultural mechanisation.”

Agricultural machinery is replacing human and animal labour almost entirely, especially in the production of rice and agro-industrial crops, said Sakhon.

According to a report of the General Department of Agriculture, Cambodia currently has 32,094 tractors, 498,119 Kubotas and 6,796 rice harvesting machines that have been actively working on the preparation of fields, plantations and rice harvests, and machinery for horticulture.

The ploughed area by tractors and Kubotas is 3,396,060 hectares, equivalent to 99.14 percent of the total ploughed areas and about 85.40 percent of the farmland was harvested using a harvesting machine, it added.

The Kingdom exported $4.037 billion in agricultural products in 2020, according to data from the Minister of Agriculture.

Sakhon said that Cambodia exported more than 690,000 tonnes of milled rice in 2020, to international markets over the world and more than 2,800,000 tonnes of paddy rice were exported to neighbouring nations like Vietnam.

Other exports include milled rice, rice paddy production, cassava, cashew nuts, mango, rubber, banana, Pailin longan, pepper, birds’ nests, fisheries products, animal products and forestry products. Khmer Times