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Marketing of organic products where farmers get a bigger share of the value chain. Clean and renewable energy systems that are appropriate for rural communities. These are just some of the concerns of small scale women and men farmers in Asia.

The Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA) arranged a study tour for its Cambodian member Farmer and Nature Net (FNN) and Laos partner Social & Economic Developers Association (SEDA-Laos) last March 2, 2011 in the Philippines in order to share some of the best practices of local NGOs and POs on these two important subjects.

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The adverse impacts of climate change on the Mekong Delta in Vietnam will be amplified several times if hydropower dams planned upstream by other countries are built, experts say.

Both local and international experts said at a forum on the Mekong River environment organized by the Can Tho University on Wednesday that the dams will seriously threaten food security in riparian countries.

Dao Trong Tu, former Vietnam country coordinator for the Mekong River Commission, said three hydropower dams are already under construction in China, and another 11 were planned in Laos and Cambodia.

La Chhuon, an expert of Oxfam Australia in Cambodia, said fishermen in the country had told him they wanted to eat fish and would not be able to eat electricity generated by hydropower dams.

Read the full story at Thanh Nien News

Foreign companies get permission to occupy and clear acres of land to grow rubber trees. But often take away the wood without creating rubber plantations. Thus they take from poor farmers what little they have to survive.

The Laotian authorities allow businesses to cut whole hectares of forest to create rubber trees plantations. But the poor peasants of the Mekong region are often left without compensation for the forests and lands that they cultivated and that were their only source of livelihood.

The farmers denounce that companies have only taken away hectares of wood without giving anything in return. Louna, village chief in Viengsai, in the southern province of Attapeu, told the Inter Press Service that in 2008 tractors and mechanical shovels arrived, felling entire forests and evicting poor farmers from the land they cultivated. The village protested to the authorities, but received no reply. Now many farmers are even deprived of the land to grow rice to eat.

In the zone around 60 hectares of rubber tree plantations were created, but they were not well cultivated, and for the most part have perished.

Read more at Sphero News