AsiaDHRRA Online

Stumbled upon this worrisome article in reddit..
http://onthecommons.org | 17 Nov 2006 / Jonathan Rowe
In my wife’s dialect of kari-ya, spoken on the island of Panay, in the Philippines, there is a word, binhi, which refers to the grains of rice that are set aside and used as seeds in the next planting season. There is [...]

For HungerWednesday, we have this insightful interview over at grains.org, of Timothy Lang, a Professor of Food Policy at City University in London and a leading authority on food.  “The steep rise in the price of basic food commodities on the world market this year came as no surprise to him, for he has been [...]

This is big! and its all over the net. From IHT
GENEVA: A high-level summit meeting to salvage a global trade pact collapsed Tuesday after the United States, China and India failed to compromise on farm import rules, according to trade officials.
Trade diplomats, who were not authorized to speak publicly, said that the meeting of seven [...]

AsiaDHRRA, a network of social development organization focusing on rural development in south east Asia, joins the international civil society organization in expressing our deep concern regarding the crackdown of protesters happening in South Korea . We are sad to note the government has not been sensitive to the voice of the people. The current [...]

For TechTuesday we found this interesting tidbit. haven’t gotten around to testing them out yet though.
The first edition of the UNESCO “Virtual Laboratory Toolkit” has just been released on the World Wide Web and within UNESCO’s Public@ series of representative “open access” CD-ROMs that are giving access to information in the public domain or to [...]

FarmFriday again and we share this article from FFTC about the looming soil pollution problems in the Asian REgion associated with “contamination of heavy metals in soils due to rapid industrialization, urbanization and intensive agriculture.”
TSUKUBA, JAPAN – The Asian economy has been growing fast in recent decades, and environmental stresses are building up rapidly along [...]

HungerWednesday features this writeup by Greenpeace we found on Eldis outlining the underlying causes of the food crisis and recommendations for the G8 countries.
Millions of people around the world are suffering food shortages, unaffordable food prices and hunger, primarily due to industrial farming, bad harvests related to climate change, unjust terms of trade and the [...]

From Eldis, we get this policy brief  that ActionAid circulated calling for the “G8 leaders to take bold steps in Hokkaido to prevent world hunger spiralling further out of control.”
Three years after the G8 pledged to ‘make poverty history’, the current global food crisis has left close to a quarter of the world’s population lacking [...]

FarmFriday brings you this interesting concept of “community-supported agriculture” fromt he LEISA Magazine.
In a situation of growing globalisation of food systems, questions are increasingly being raised about the integrity of our food supply, the impact of its production on the environment and animal welfare, and the fairness of trade between consumers and workers along the [...]

HungerWednesday features this interesting article from PANOS that furthers the discussion on the effects of commercial scale biofuel cultivation to food security.
7 March 2008 | Imelda Abano

The Philippine government wants farmers to plant crops for biofuels on a vast scale. But could the quest for green energy create food shortages?

Growing world energy demand, the insecurity [...]

HA NOI — The agriculture sector will put in maximum efforts to increase the area of hybrid rice to 70 per cent of the country’s total rice area by 2010, said Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Bui Ba Bong in a meeting of the ministry on Wednesday held to discuss the result of [...]

Here’s a research paper – Social Impact of Rising Prices – Mitigating Measures for the Lower Income Group – shared by our good partners in Malaysia – ERA consumer. In brief, FOMCA examines and identifies the impacts of the rising prices of basic commodities in Malaysia and its impact to low income groups and proposes [...]

IHT| By Keith Bradsher and Andrew Martin | Published: June 30, 2008
At least 29 countries have sharply curbed food exports in recent months, to ensure that their own people have enough to eat, at affordable prices.
When it comes to rice, India, Vietnam, China and 11 other countries have limited or banned exports. Fifteen countries, including [...]

For TechTuesday, we are very excited to try out the new version of FrontlineSMS. I’ve been having fun toying with the previous version and am now looking forward to testing the new version on a suitable popular campaign here in the Philippines.
Visit Kiwanja.net- developers of the app and download frontlinesms here.