AsiaDHRRA Online

HungerWednesday brings this worrisome development in Cambodia. This is probably happening in other third world countries too.
Grain
Cambodia is a major target of the global landgrabbing surge that began in March this year when the world food crisis was at its peak. High-ranking foreign delegations have regularly been visiting Phnom Penh, looking to strike deals for [...]

HungerWednesday highlights this interesting article from Ms. Lim Li Ching of TWN about how the widespread practice of sustainable agriculture can practically solve the current global food crisis and at the same time alleviate climate change.
The challenges facing agriculture today are immense. Of immediate concern is the global increase in food prices, starkly brought home [...]

Here’s a very interesting article about how SRI is proving to be a viable rice production strategy worldwide.
By William J. Broad
IHT
Many a professor dreams of revolution. But Norman Uphoff, working in a leafy corner of the Cornell University campus, is leading an inconspicuous one centered on solving the global food crisis. The secret, he says, [...]

HungerWednesday features this alarming and frightening news about how Iraqi commercial farmers are forced  to use registered terminator seeds (the “protected variety”). Order 81 is part of ghastly Bremer’s 100 orders
Order 81 deals specifically with Plant Variety Protection (PVP) because it is designed to protect the commercial interests of corporate seed companies. Its aim is [...]

For HungerWednesday, we found this article from GRAIN, which is very informative reading in the light of the impnding ASEAN FTA with EU…
The European Union is promoting “association agreements” or “cooperation agreements” with Latin American countries. These agreements appear weaker and more flexible than the equivalent agreements that the USA is signing with countries [...]

This article from IGTN suggests that the recent collapse of the WTO mini-ministerial, July 2008, reflects the new geopolitics of the global economy. The emerging economies are approaching trade issues and negotiations differently. Particularly they place more emphasis on supporting women employed in agriculture. There is new conviction among negotiators that poverty and livelihood issues [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]