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…

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.

continue reading…

NEW York: On behalf of 60 family farmers, seed businesses and organic agricultural organizations, the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) filed suit today against Monsanto Company challenging the chemical giant’s patents on genetically modified seed. The organic plaintiffs were forced to sue preemptively to protect themselves from being accused of patent infringement should their crops ever become contaminated by Monsanto’s genetically modified seed.

Monsanto has sued farmers in the United States and Canada, in the past, when their patented genetic material has inadvertently contaminated their crops.

Continue reading about why farmers and seed producers launched preemptive strike against Monsanto…

Almost a third of global farm output depends on animal pollination, largely by honey bees……  The bee crisis has been treated as a niche concern until now, but as the UN’s index of food prices hits an all time-high in real terms (not just nominal) and grain shortages trigger revolutions in the Middle East, it is becoming urgent to know whether the plight of the honey bee risks further exhausting our already thin margin of food global security.

Continue reading about how the Honey bee collapse threatens global food security…