CamboNews: Bumper Rice Crop Bad for Cambodian Millers

Thanks to mechanization, new rice varieties, and increased irrigation, this year’s rice crop is enormous. But local millers are losing business because they don’t have the level of industrialization necessary to deal with it. So the profits are largely falling into the pockets of Thai and Vietnamese millers. Unreported by the story are the risks of these new mechanisms to temporarily increase rice yields: I would normally expect these methods, especially irrigation, to cause short-term gains and long-term problems, especially requiring more inputs of expensive fertilizer and pesticides – watch for reports of increased soil salinity, use of pesticides and fertilizer, and farm ownership consolidation!)
More here.