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For many farmers in Thailand’s rice belt, agreements between Asian countries to reduce trade barriers have not brought all the benefits that national leaders promised.

“We are afraid of the free trade area,” says Chatree Radomlek, a 37-year-old farmer in Pathum Thani, about an hour’s drive north of Bangkok but a world away from the capital’s glitzy hotels and restaurants.

A rural community where local people boast of the nutritional benefits of eating field mice, its green paddies help make Thailand the world’s biggest rice exporter.

But where humid weather and new farming technologies used to dominate local farmers’ conversations, free trade is now the hot topic.

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TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta:There is a protest against the food estate project once again.

This time it is the Indonesian Environment Forum (WALHI) that has spoken up.

“If this project continues, then Indonesia would enter a period of validated land seizures,” said M. Islah, Walhi Campaign Manager for Water and Food in a press release, Tuesday (3 / 2) evening

According to Islah, the land seizures would happen if local and foreign big businesses and small farmers are allowed to compete legally.

Read the full story at Tempo Interactive

Quezon City, Philippines, March 9, 2010 - Multinational companies like Monsanto, Syngenta, Cargil, and Bayer, are expanding their markets for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in developing countries like the Philippines.

This was the warning raised by anti-GMO groups in a press conference in Quezon City yesterday, which they organized for the Filipino farmer who went on hunger strike at the FAO’s 10th international technical conference entitled “Agricultural biotechnologies in developing countries: Options and opportunities in crops, forestry, livestock, fisheries and agro-industry to face the challenges of food insecurity and climate change (ABDC-10)” in Guadalajara, Mexico last March 1-4, to protest what is perceived to be the latter’s massive promotion of the commercial use of GMOs as a solution to poverty and hunger in developing countries.

A GMO is an organism which carries genetic material that has been made in the laboratory and transferred into it by genetic engineering.

Citing studies here and abroad, anti-GMO activists point to its risks to the environment and human health.

Raul Socrates Banzuela, National Coordinator of the Pambansang Kilusan ng mga Samahang Magsasaka (PAKISAMA), a national confederation of peasant organizations in the Philippines, said that it is important for the public to be aware of the dangers of GMO flooding the country.

He said that the public cannot allow GMOs to be imposed on farmers because it is a false solution to the problem of hunger and poverty.

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Palm oil tested on sustainability
By Muhammad Cohen

NUSA DUA, Bali - Palm oil plantations play a major role in the growing problems of deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions in Indonesia and tropical woodlands around the world. Last week’s gathering of the International Conference on Oil Palm and Environment (ICOPE) is one move toward making the industry part of the solution.

Whether the palm oil industry can, in fact, be part of the solution to deforestation is a proposition that divides palm oil producers, manufacturers, retailers, and, naturally, environmental groups. At one extreme, sustainable palm oil production is considered an oxymoron. The opposite fringe sees critics of palm oil as dupes of a developed-world plot against poor farmers, built on myths of species extinction and climate change, funded by palm’s rival oil and fat producers.

Read the full story at Asia Times

WHAT: Press Conference of Isidoro “Boy” Ancog, Filipino farmer who went on hunger strike at FAO Biotech Meeting to protest imposition of biotechnology, especially GMOs, on developing countries

WHEN: March 8, 2010, 10:00 AM

WHERE: Max’s Restaurant, Quezon Circle

Filipino farmer ends hunger strike, exposes pro-GMO agenda of FAO meeting

Filipino farmer, Isidoro “Boy” Ancog,” who went on a hunger strike during the FAO biotech conference in Guadalajara, Mexico City on March 1-4, 2010, ended his protest action on March 4, 2010, the last day of the conference, and is coming home on Sunday, March 7.
“It’s over. I will be flying home early tomorrow to hug my family. I also miss my ducks, my garden and my rice farm, which was hit by El Nino,” Ancog wrote in an e-mail sent to friends and supporters in the Philippines.

Ancog, began his hunger strike last March 2 after intervening in a plenary session of the 10th FAO international technical conference on Agricultural Biotechnologies in Developing Countries (ABDC-10). Ancog objected to the fact that the Conference appeared to be massively promoting the commercial use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), as the most viable solution to poverty and hunger in developing countries.

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Taipei, March 1, 2010 (CENS)–Taiwan and China are scheduled to enter substantive discussion on the so-called early-harvest list, or priority items for mutual market opening, during the second talk on cross-Taiwan Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) in Taipei earlier this month.

Despite inevitable give and take, both sides are expected to iron out their differences and reach agreement eventually, especially in view of the good-will gesture made by Chinese leaders recently, particularly on the thorniest issue regarding import of Chinese agricultural products into Taiwan.

Read the full story at Taiwan Economic News

Filipino farmer ends 3-day hunger strike

Guadalajara, Mexico, March 4, 2010 — The Filipino farmer who went on hunger strike during the FAO biotech conference in Guadalajara, Mexico City being held on March 1-4, 2010, ended his protest action on March 4, 2010, the last day of the conference.

“It’s over. I will be flying home early tomorrow to hug my family. I also miss my ducks, my garden and my rice farm, which was hit by El Nino,” Isidoro “Boy” Ancog, an organic farmer from Bohol, Philippines, wrote in an e-mail sent to his friends and supporters in the Philippines.

Ancog announced the end of his hunger strike during the last day of the conference, where the conference report was to be adopted.

“[…] I formally lift my hunger strike. But rest assured that we will continue with our advocacy of producing safe and healthy food in our fields, which we will all enjoy, as one people,” he said in his speech.

Ancog made his intervention when reference was made to the paragraph 24 of the report, which states that “A representative from civil society expressed concern that biotechnologies would be imposed on farmers in developing countries and could adversely impact the livelihoods of small holder farmers.”

(Photo by Ditdit Peligrina)

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BISAD Supports the Hunger Strike of Boy Ancog against GMOs at the ABDC10 in Guadalajara, Mexico

The Bohol Initiators for Sustainable Agriculture and Development (BISAD) is a multi-sectoral provincial network composed of farmers’ groups, NGOs, consumers, local government offices, and business enterprises that promotes the development and spread of organic agriculture in the province of Bohol, The Philippines. BISAD was a key player in making Bohol the first GMO-free province in the Philippines way back in 2003 when the Provincial Government passed a legislation prohibiting the entry of GMOs into the province for health and environmental reasons, and to protect Bohol’s biodiversity.

On the occasion of conference on Agricultural Biotechnologies in Developing Countries (ABDC10) organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Guadalajara, Mexico, BISAD expresses its support to fellow Boholano, Isidore “Boy” Ancog, who represents the Asian Farmers’ Alliance (AFA) and is currently staging a hunger strike at the conference venue in protest of the possible endorsement by the Conference and the FAO of GMOs for use by farmers in food and agriculture production. Like Boy, we do not believe that GMOs will solve the problems of low agricultural productivity, low rural incomes and widespread hunger across the world, especially in developing countries. Instead, we believe that GMOs exacerbate these problems by, among others, increasing agro-chemical use among farmers (through herbicide tolerant GMO crops), aggravating insect pest immunity (through pest resistance GMOs), upsetting natural flow and evolution of biodiversity (through GMO contamination) undermining and threatening farmers’ use of seeds (through application of intellectual property rights by corporations on GM crops), etc.

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Farm clothes are not known for their sartorial elegance, but a group of Hokkaido women are staging their own catwalk shows with a new line of outdoor farmwear they are calling “Agri-Fashion.”

The women behind “Agri-Fashion,” which sounds similar to “ugly fashion” when pronounced in Japanese, are even touting it as a movement with the potential to attract younger people to careers in farming.

“I always wanted cute working clothes that were more fashionable,” says Kimiko Ikawa, 56, who launched the new line. “I thought by using bright colors and lots of patterns, I could make a new brand of farmwear that hasn’t been made before.”

Ikawa, a fashion school graduate, married a farmer and followed him to the town of Biei, Hokkaido, where the absence of younger residents has become a serious problem.

Read the full story at The Japan Times