AsiaDHRRA Online

We consume a fair amount of tea here in the office and this newsbit from Greenpeace East Asia had us a bit worried. “A Greenpeace investigation has found pesticides banned for use on tea in the products marketed by some of China’s top tea companies. Some of the firms, which include China Tea, Tenfu Tea [...]

We, 130 representatives of small food producers including farmers, fisherfolks, indigenous peoples, pastoralists, rural women, and youth, cooperatives, labor movements, consumers and NGOs from 20 countries worldwide met from March 10 to 11, 2012 for the CSO parallel consultation to the 31st FAO-Asia Pacific Regional Conference in Hanoi, Vietnam. We  are aware of the complex [...]

FrankenThursday is back with this bit from Wired.  The cause of the recent bee colony collapse disorder continues to generate heated debates. And this new study will further ratchet up the discussions as everyone tries to figure out the cause and identify solutions to save our friendly pollinators . A controversial new study of honeybee [...]

From Grain Food is a key driver of climate change. How our food gets produced and how it ends up on our tables accounts for around half of all human-generated greenhouse gas emissions. Chemical fertilizers, heavy machinery and other petroleum-dependant farm technologies contribute significantly. The impact of the food industry as a whole is even [...]

Here’s another take on the fair trade issue which of late has been under criticism for its less than convincing performance in helping out poor farmers Today, on World Fair Trade Day, we have something else to feel guilty about. That fair-trade cup of coffee we savour may not only fail to ease the lot [...]

Fish and rice is always a tasty combo right? FarmFriday shares this farming method developed by the Assessment Institute of Agricultural Technology (AIAT), Ungaran, Indonesia.  Thanks again to FFTC. Learn how to setup the Legowo System here….

Farm technology again for FarmFriday courtesy of FFTC Archives. This is a  concise howto on building  a small Biogas plant that can supply the energy needs of a farm household. This technology was developed by the Department of Agriculture and Forestry Extension, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Vietnam.read the full howto on Building a [...]

FarmFriday is back again after a long rest and today we feature this machine  developed by the Department of Agriculture of Thailand. We got this from our friends over at FFTC. This machine attempts to resolve the following problem encountered using manual sowing “for a consistent spread, farmers have to constantly cast the seeds from [...]

A very interesting reading about another reprehensible facet of the climate change issue. Essentially,  as  Rezaul Karim Chowdhury says “By pushing climate loans, the UK is making people in countries like mine pay twice for climate change, even though we played virtually no part in causing the problem.” In Climate Loan Sharks, the World Development Movement [...]

Guardian.co.uk This week in Cape Town, the World Bank will decide whether to approve new climate adaptation loans for five countries. In Bangladesh and around the world, campaigners are resisting these loans and urging their governments not to accept new debt for climate change. More than 50 organisations from countries due to receive the loans [...]

A historic event in the IYFF campaign, WRF shares this very important step that transpired in the FAO Side Event on Family Farming: Last Saturday, 2nd July 2011, the plenary of the 37th FAO Conference ratified the Resolution introduced by the Philippino delegation (see attached text),   supported by more than 15 countries, without any opposition, [...]

Asiadhrra warmly welcomes the recent election of José Graziano da Silva from Brazil as the new director general of FAO. “He received a total of 92 votes out of 180 votes cast, winning over former Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos Cuyaubé, who received 88 votes. There were no abstentions. The election took place on [...]

HungerWednesday shares this interesting viewpoint on the issue of global hunger from Eldis Agriculture and Food Security News 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 [...]

YahooNews Angry farmers brought two cows to Tokyo where they shouted and punched the air Tuesday in a protest to demand compensation for products contaminated by radiation spewing from Japan’s crippled nuclear plant. The 200 farmers from northeastern Japan wore green bandanas, held aloft cabbages they said they couldn’t sell and carried signs saying “Stop [...]

HungerWednesday found this at the FAO newsroom… “Potentially catastrophic” impacts on food production from slow-onset climate changes are expected to increasingly hit the developing world in the future and action is needed now to prepare for those anticipated impacts, FAO warned today in a submission to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. “Currently [...]