Discontent, unrest and agitation engulf the coasts of our country. Fisherpeople, under severe duress, have no other way but to launch a national campaign to conserve the coastal and marine resources and to protect their lives and livelihood. The campaign begins on 1st May 2008. A central (...)
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The world food situation: new driving forces and required actions
by J. von Braun
The world food situation is being rapidly redefined, as income growth, climate change, high energy prices, globalisation, and urbanisation transform food consumption, production, and markets. This paper provides an overview of the the key forces driving these changes, and considers what policy (...)
Manufacturing a food crisis
The Nation
When tens of thousands of people staged demonstrations in Mexico last year to protest a 60 percent increase in the price of tortillas, many analysts pointed to biofuel as the culprit. Because of US government subsidies, American farmers were devoting more and more acreage to corn for ethanol (...)
Crop Prospects and Food Situation
World cereal production in 2008 is forecast to increase 2.6 percent to a record 2 164 million tonnes. The bulk of the increase is expected to be in wheat following significant expansion in plantings in major producing countries. Coarse grains output is tentatively forecast to remain around the (...)
Food crop diversity is key to sustainability
SciDev.net
Thousands of traditional crop species could help break dependence on a few global food crops, and offer valuable environmental services, says Monty Jones
Only 150 crop species are grown commercially on a global scale, with wheat and maize alone providing over half of the world’s protein and (...)
Promoting women workers’ rights in African horticulture : overview of research into conditions on horticulture farms in Kenya, Zambia, Tanzania and Uganda
September 2007, 24 p. (pdf)
This document gives a brief summary of the research conducted into the situation of women workers in the African horticultural sector between 2005 and 2007. The research was conducted by local organisations in Kenya, Zambia, Tanzania and Uganda and has been summarised by Women Working (...)
African Agriculture and the World Bank: Development or impoverishment?
Kjell Havnevik, Deborah Fahy Bryceson, Atakilte Beyene and Prosper Matondi look at the destructive role the world bank has played in African agriculture and food production
Agriculture’s dominant role in Sub-Saharan Africa’s local, national and regional economies and cultures throughout (...)
Child bondage continues in Indian cotton supply chain
september 2007, 39 p. (pdf)
ILRF, along with international partners including OECD Watch, India Committee of the Netherlands, Deutsche Welthungerhilfe and Eine Welt Netz NRW, released a report focused on recent trends in employment of child labor on cottonseed farms in India. The report estimates that roughly 416,460 (...)
Out of the laboratory and on to our plates: Nanotechnology in Food & Agriculture
March 2008
Untested and potentially hazardous manufactured nanomaterials can be found in food, food packaging and other products on supermarket shelves in the European Union, according to a new report released today by Friends of the Earth Europe.
’Out of the laboratory and on to our plates: (...)
Report on cocoa and forced child labor
October 2006, 15 p. (pdf)
This report from the ILRF critiques the Harkin-Engel Cocoa Protocol and raises key questions about the cocoa industry’s progress in eliminating child labor since 2001.
Over 40% of the world’s cocoa, the primary ingredient in chocolate, comes from the West African nation of Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory (...)

The Impact of Trade Liberalisation on Agriculture in Developing Countries: The Experience of Ghana
Third World Network, 2008, 120 pages
There is increasing concern over the effects of import liberalisation on the viability of agriculture, particularly that practised by small farmers of food crops in developing countries.
Such concern has emerged because of the experience of many developing countries undertaking structural (...)
The Last Straw: a new generation of biofuels turns out to be another environmental disaster
Now they might start sitting up. They wouldn’t listen to the environmentalists or even the geologists. Can governments ignore the capitalists?
A report published last week by Citibank, and so far unremarked by the media, proposes “genuine difficulties” in increasing the production of crude oil, (...)
Whose harvest? The politics of organic seed certification
The vision behind organic agriculture is one in which care for the environment and health are central, and farmers get a fair deal for their efforts. But organic agriculture is also becoming serious business – with marketing tools, like certification, occupying more and more space and influence. (...)
Agroenergy: Myths and Impacts in Latin America
by Pastoral Land Commission and Network for Social Justice and Human Rights
Recent studies on the negative impacts of fossil fuels have contributed to agrofuels becoming one of the most important issues of the day. Currently, the global energy matrix is composed of petroleum (35%), coal (23%), and natural gas (21%). Just ten of the wealthiest countries consume close to (...)
Why Asia’s farmers deserve protection
Focus on the Global South
One of the terrible truths of the 20th century is that it was a blight on small farmers or peasants everywhere. Before looking at the question of whether Asia’s farmers need protection, it is necessary to consider this historical background.
In both wealthy capitalist economies and in socialist (...)
Bilateral biosafety bullies
GRAIN and the African Centre for Biosafety, October 2006
How corporations use bilateral trade channels to weaken biotech regulations
The agribusiness sector has been struggling to respond to worldwide opposition to genetically modified (GM) foods ever since farmers started sowing the laboratory-engineered seeds in the mid-1990s. Transnational (...)
The end of farm-saved seed ?
GRAIN Briefing, february 2007, 14 p. (pdf)
The big players in the world seed industry are grumbling about loopholes in the plant variety protection system, which was the alternative to patenting that they set up in the 1960s. The Europeans want to get rid of farmers’ limited entitlement to save seed. The Americans want to restrict the (...)
Whither Biosafety?
October 2005, GRAIN
Despite the introduction of the Cartagena Protocol in 2000, countries are increasingly facilitating the entry of GM crops. According the international NGO GRAIN and many other civil society groups, GM crops are completely incompatible with the principles of food sovereignty. This text argues (...)