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”.

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 and China Tea King, export tea products to Japan, the US and Europe.”

The link to the full report can be found on the Greenpeace website link below.

Read the full article at Greenpeace…

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 deaths has deepened a bitter dispute over whether the developed world’s most popular pesticides are causing an ecological catastrophe.

Researchers led by biologist Chensheng Lu of Harvard University report a direct link between hive health and dietary exposure to imidacloprid, a so-called neonicotinoid pesticide linked to colony collapse disorder, the mysterious and massive die-off of bees across North America and Europe.

Continue reading the Wired article here…

A clearer summary here….

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

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…

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 greater: destroying forests and savannahs to produce animal feed and generating climate-damaging waste through excess packaging, processing, refrigeration and the transport of food over long distances, despite leaving millions of people hungry.
Continue reading “Food and climate change: the forgotten link” at Grain….

Here’s a new twist on urban farming -hydroponics basically. An article in FastCo describes a rising business venture that grows organic vegetables in shipping containers using hydroponic farming technology. Awesome!!!

Liotta decided to use recycled shipping containers as “grow pods,” which are outfitted with organic hydroponic nutrient solutions; computer-controlled environmental systems to regulate temperature, humidity, pH levels, and CO2; and lights that emit specific spectrums at different points in the day. The system provides the exact amount of water, lights, and nutrients that a crop requires–so there is no wasted energy (though the pods are still hooked up to the power grid). In a 320 square foot area, PodPonics can produce an acre’s worth of produce. The pods can be stacked on top of each other for more efficient use of space.

continue reading Localize It: PodPonics Grows High-Tech Organic Produce In Shipping Containers here….

Read the feature article in The Atlantic here…

Visit their website here….

“On Polyface, it’s the pigs that best embody Salatin’s ideas of creative disturbance, as well as his holistic, waste-not-want-not management approach. As Salatin sees it, pigs have a plough at the end of their noses and a sign on their foreheads that reads “will work for corn”

MASIPAG-trained farmers have not used chemical pesticides for decades now, he said, with ducks for example an excellent natural control against golden snail; “it converts biomass into eggs and meat as well,” he observed.

MASIPAG organic farms, he said, average 6.7 tons of rice per hectare in North Cotabato, more than 7 tons per hectare in Laguna but only 5.1 tons per hectare in Surigao del Sur where soils are poor.

Edgardo S. Uychiat, president of the Negros Island Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development Foundation, pointed out that in Bago, Negros Occidental, for example, a farmer averages 7 tons per hectare of organic rice compared with 6.3 tons per hectare for conventional rice farming.

A diversified organic farming system managed by Iliranan tribals at Mt. Kanlaon earns P332,000 in annual gross sales compared with P72,00 gross sales with traditional monocrop rice farming.

continue reading about why organic farming is cost-effective…