AsiaDHRRA Online

Sad scenes like this are being played out all over China as the demands of modernization and opportunists clash with the lives of poor chinese farmers like brave Yang Youde. Yang Youde is a farmer who had contracted to rent 25 mu of land.  The lease was set to continue until 2019.  Over the years, [...]

Got this from our friend Diderik. HungerWednesday shares this informative book published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars about the worrisome trend of international landgrabbing for food production. The world is experiencing a grain rush. With increasing frequency, food-importing countries and private investors are acquiring farmland across the developing world. This new publication, [...]

HungerWednesday shares this interesting article from Resurgence about how  the globalization of the food market has made food cheap but ironically has also caused hunger. Chanced upon this in our Facebook as shared by FB friend Imam Cahyono. Cheap food causes hunger. On its face, the statement makes no sense. If food is cheaper it’s [...]

HungerWednesday shares this disturbing news at Asia Sentinel we picked up from Manuel Quezon’s FB updates about the yet another rice crisis looming just up ahead. “This year, I will not have enough rice to eat for the whole year,” says Kong Chanthorn, a rice farmer in Srayov Kharng Tbong village in Cambodia’s Kompong Thom [...]

Danielle Nierenberg and Bernard Pollack  shared  this article with us about their visit to the  World Vegetable Center in Arusha, Tanzania. The intrepid couple are traveling in Africa and you can keep up with their discoveries and adventures in their personal blog at  BorderJumpers. The World Vegetable Center is focusing on “building a sustainable seed [...]

Sharing with you updates on the CSO Parallel Forum of the World Summit on Food Security from our partner WRF, represented by Mr. Jose Osaba. Monday, 16 November, 2009 Early morning greetings from Rome: Since the evening of Friday, 13 November, we have been here taking part in the activities of the parallel forum to [...]

A good read we stumbled upon. HungerWednesday thinks this is good to reflect on… This is the award-winning article John Robbins originally wrote for the best-selling 2001 book Imagine: What America Could Be in the 21st Century. It’s the year 2030. A meal is served. It was quick to prepare, just a few seconds in [...]

HungerWednesday shares this interesting website we stumbled upon while browsing Grain. Visit http://farmlandgrab.org, website maintained by Grain, “that offers the most comprehensive information tool on the global land grab for outsourced food production” Grain says the website “provides an open, up-to-date and easy to search library of over 800 articles, interviews and reports on farm [...]

AsiaDHRRA is co-organizing the Regional Conference on the Impact of the Global Economic and Financial Crisis to the Vulnerable Sectors in the Region: Civil Society Voices and ASEAN to be held on July 28-29, 2009 in Jakarta, Indonesia. The regional dialogue seeks to strengthen a constructive civil society interaction with ASEAN and policy makers in [...]

HungerWednesday again and we highlight this interesting article from Celias about how “China ended its dependence on food aid, but almost overnight.. became the world’s third largest food aid donor.” And China got to this by dismantling collective farms and replaced them with family farms. Wow! Another convincing proof that family farming is the way [...]

HungerWednesday brings another good read from IDRC though a bit on the heavy side. Perfect for late night or airport departure lounge reading. A must read for food rights advocates and CSO workers. This book is the first wide-ranging guide to the key issues of intellectual property and ownership, genetics, biodiversity, and food security. Proceeding [...]

Land acquisitions are on the increase in Africa and other continents, raising the risk that poor people will be evicted or lose access to land, water, and other resources, according to the first detailed study of the trend.  The UN Funded – IFAD study warns that such deals can bring many opportunities (guaranteed outlets, employment, [...]

HungerWednesday brings this interesting tidbit- Philippines actually have “Rice Sufficiency Officers”. Pretty interesting right? and they’re undergoing a retooling workshop. They must need this as they have a kinda daunting task ahead of them — ensuring a rice-sufficient Philippines by 2013. Close to 100 rice sufficiency officers (RSOs) and PhilRice officials nationwide gathered for the [...]

ToolkitSundays shares this useful Advocacy Toolkit from Why.  The toolkit draws from the american experience but us Asians might pick up a nugget or two of new insights and approaches in fighting hunger and poverty upon reading the booklet.Why has a lot of downloadable publications related to poverty advocacy and hunger that you might find [...]