Saudi company is interested in leasing up to 200,000 hectares of rain-fed government land and private farms to produce 1.2 million metric tons (MMT) of rice for the Saudi Arabian market.

Dante Delima, assistant secretary at the Department of Agriculture (DA) and coordinator of the National Rice Program (NRP), has already endorsed to Agriculture Secretary Proceso J. Alcala a proposal to create a technical working group (TWG) to study the matter.

The proposal for the long-term land lease was advanced by Dr. Khalid Abu al-Saud of Dar Al-Maskukat Trad¬ing of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, through a letter dated April 1, 2012 and coursed through Dr. Eduardo C. Sison, chairman of the Madecor Group of Los Baños, Laguna.

Continue reading in YahooNews……..

The agriculture and environment CSO stakeholders recommend that ASEAN and/or its member states:

1. Stop forced evictions in the interests of large-scale agriculture;
2. In all cases where development projects will result in dispossession, international human rights standards should be fully observed. Affected communities should be fairly compensated, including by ensuring access to agricultural land
3. Ensure sufficient budgets for sustainable agriculture and develop policies and programs to support small-scale farmers – women, men and young persons. In particular ensue access to land, waters and seed, provide support to organic farming, cooperative marketing, access to affordable credit, infrastructure, agricultural extension and meaningful participation of small-scale farmers in decision-making processes towards ensuring food and nutrition security;
4. Ensure that all agriculture development programs and policies are gender sensitive and gender responsive;
5. Extend technical assistance to improve competitiveness of small-scale farmers through sharing and learning exchanges on sustainable farming technologies, the establishment of an ASEAN Farmers’ Bank and ASEAN Small-scale Farmers’ Council to ensure institutionalized participation in ASEAN processes;
6. Install monitoring mechanisms to hold transnational corporations accountable for their role with respect to large-scale food and agro-fuel production, toxic chemicals, land grabbing and the displacement of food crops including provision of guidelines for ASEAN governments on how to strengthen coherence between national and global food policies;
7. Ratify and implement international treaties and provisions pertaining to natural resource management and agriculture, such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which provides for the right to adequate food and to a decent living, which in the case of small-scale farmers includes the right to seeds and land.

Read full ACSC-APF 2012 Statement

Ms. Lany Rebagay in behalf of Asiadhrra, presented during the Opening Plenary of the ACSC-APF 2012 the AsiaDHRRA-AFA Experience in Engaging ASEAN on Agriculture and Rural Development. Download the presentation here…

About the ACSC/APF

The ACSC/APF is an annual gathering of civil society which was started in 2005 during Malaysia’s chairship. It follows with the Philippines in 2006, Singapore in 2007, Thailand in 2009, Vietnam in 2010 and Indonesia in 2011. At the end of each Forum, civil society comes up with a collective statement and recommendations for ASEAN.

The ACSC/APF is a main space for democratic and constructive debates on ideas, formulation of proposals for ASEAN, exchange of experiences among civil society and peoples’ movements, expanding networks across issues in the region, and doing joint actions, especially on community building process. This year, reflecting the major concerns of the ASEAN people towards the Association, ACSC/APF 2012 chooses the theme “Transforming ASEAN into a People?Centered Community”.

Interesting news about China pushing out new legislations “restricting research, field trials, production, sale, import and export of genetically engineered grain seeds. The draft stipulates that no organization or person can employ unauthorized GE technology in any major food product in China.”

“This is actually a world-first initiative that deals with GE food legislation at state law level,” according to my colleague, Fang Lifeng, a food and agriculture campaigner with Greenpeace.

“There are currently too many loopholes and weak control over GE food and technology in China. This law needs to clarify what ‘relevant laws and regulations’ can be applied to regulate GE crops. We urge legislators to accelerate the legislation of Genetically Engineered Organisms Bio-safety Law, and also to enhance the supervision of GE food and other products. Otherwise, this law will only be paying lip service,” Fang warned.

 The grain law will likely have significant ramifications for China’s rice, the country’s most important staple food. The origins of rice cultivation can be traced to the valleys of the Yangtze River, with some estimates suggesting cultivation began over 7,000 years ago. It dictates the lives of millions of farmers in the Chinese countryside and feeds over a billion Chinese citizens each year. And using experimental GE technology to meddle with such a widely eaten crop could spell disaster – ecologically, financially and for human health.

continue reading here….

Here’s great news straight from  José A. Osaba and our good friends at WRF. Thanks to all partners and friends and the Asiadhrra Network for actively participating in the IYFF campaign!

“We have got finally the good news that many of our organizations have been waiting for. Today, December 22nd 2011, at 4.55 pm, New York time, the UN General Assembly has declared 2014 the International Year of Family Farming-IYFF. Last October, the Permanent Mission of the Philippines  to the UN, introduced to the GA Second Committee a draft resolution about the IYFF declaration, co-sponsored afterwards  by many other countries and, eventually approved by consensus of all its members. We are extremely grateful to the Permanent Mission of the Philippines for its leadership and its commitment to the IYFF declaration procedure, and to all the countries that have co-sponsored the draft Resolution or given their final approval.

Thanks to the kidness of the Spanish Permanent Mission, I have been present during today´s GA plenary session in New York, keeping in mind with admiration during such historical moments, the more than 350 organizations from 60 countries that have been supporting the IYFF Campaign.

We have reached the main objective of our common Campaign in favour of the IYFF declaration,  started on February 2008, after the celebration of the II IFAD´s Farmers´s Forum in Rome.  For the first time in history, an International Year has been promoted by Civil Society. Many thanks to everybody!”

José A. Osaba

Both seminars were received support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China and the provincial government units of Hubei and Sichuan Provinces.

In both seminars, Florante “Nonoy” Villas, AsiaDHRRA’s LSFM regional program manager shared AsiaDHRRA’s experience in anchoring ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community’s participatory process in drafting the 2011-2015 Framework  Action Plan for Rural Development and Poverty Eradication and AsiaDHRRA’s strategies, models and experiences in implementing the Linking Small Farmers to Markets.

IPRCC is an international anti-poverty organization established jointly by the Chinese Government and the United Nations Development Program and other international organizations in June 2005. IPRCC has committed to make contributions to poverty reduction in the world through the promotion of policy research, experience-sharing, knowledge exchange and South-South Cooperation in the field of poverty reduction and development.

IPRCC was established by the Chinese Government to provide a platform for various professionals and development practitioners from different developing countries to share theoretic studies and policy analysis and explore effective approaches for agricultural growth and rural development. It is one of the 5 new measures to assume China’s international responsibilities announced by China’s president Hu Jintao at the High-Level Meeting on Financing for Development, on the occasion of the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations. On June 22, 2004, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao delivered a keynote speech titled Promote Asian Cooperation in New Century at the Third Foreign Ministers’ Meeting of the Asian Cooperation Dialogue held in Qingdao in which he pointed out that strengthening regional cooperation is not only an important part of China’s new-era foreign policy but also the need of its own development.

We, 200 women and men, leaders of national, regional and international farmers’ organizations, civil society groups and social movements, and key academic and research institutions, from four continents of the world –Africa, Americas, Asia and Europe-, as well as representatives from national governments and inter-governmental organizations, have gathered in Bilbao, Spain, for the Family Farming World Conference with the theme “Feeding the World, Caring for the Earth.”

Continue reading the IYFF declaration here….

Read more about the campaign towards an International Year of Family Farming in 2014…

The important workshop was co-organized by AFA and AsiaDHRRA, API and Binadesa/InDHRRA. Our speakers came from VNFU, APNFS, SPI, TKN, and ASETUC-UNI-APRO.

download the food price volatility plenary report here…

Download the PDF here….

Articles included:

• Diversity in international biosafety regulation: MacKenzie, R.
• From risks to rights in southern Africa:  Mohamed Katerere, J.
• Bt cotton: benefits for poor farmers?: Glover, D.
• IPRs, biotechnology and development: Yamin, F.
• Regulating biotechnology: Newell, P.
• Corporate dominance and agricultural biotechnology: Glover, D.
• The Chinese biotechnology experience: Keeley, J.
• Biotechnology for Kenya: Odame, H., Kameri-Mbote, P. and Wafula, D.

If, however, we look back over the past two decades, we can observe that except for the current downturn, hunger has been on the increase. Between the early 1990s and 2007, we had periods in which food prices were low and economic growth was strong, but hunger kept rising. What does this mean? It means that the improvement in the current hunger picture is only the result of the reversal of recent crisis effects. It also means that there is a fundamental structural problem with our food system that goes beyond temporary increases and decreases in food prices. That the food problem is rooted in poverty and radically unequal distributions of income and assets, within and across countries, which influence both food production systems and food consumption patterns.

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Agriculture must produce more from less, and do so in an environmentally sustainable, efficient and socially just manner. The GIZ partnership farming approach provides a holistic and long-term sustainable solution, through investment in farm system management, capacitybuilding, production modernization and strengthened linkages between production and market demand.

This four-day event offers a unique opportunity to those seeking to improve the performance of their organizations in promoting and assisting in the development of smallholder farming. Participants will gain insight from experienced GIZ experts from across South and Southeast Asia and will benefit from avaluable exchange of experiences through the joint resolution of participants’ unique challenges.

Click to download the program and registration form….

For more information and registration, please visit their website: www.thai-german-cooperation.info/giz_trainings_agribusiness.html