PHNOM PENH, 26 August 2010 (IRIN) – Late rains and record low water levels in Cambodia’s two main fresh water systems will affect food security and the livelihoods of millions, government officials and NGOs warn.

“We expect the impact to be very strong,” said Nao Thuok, director of the Fisheries Administration, adding that low water levels along the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers were already limiting fish production and migration.

Crucial spawning grounds in floodplains along the rivers remained dry. “The places where the fish usually lay their eggs do not have much water so the fish population will decrease a lot,” he warned.

Approximately six million Cambodians or 45 percent of the population depend on fishing in the Mekong and Tonle Sap basins, the government’s Inland Fisheries Research and Development Institute, reports.

Read the full story at IRIN

The exoskeleten can be strapped-on to farm workers and helps reduce the strain of more physically demanding tasks.

Most of Japan’s farmers are over the age of 60 and many people fear it is a profession that is completely dying out.

Presenter: Helene Hofman
Speaker: Takeo Ogawa, professor at Kumamoto Gakuen University and trustee of the Asian Aging Business Center; Masayoshi Honma, professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Tokyo; Mika Iba, Network for a Safe and Secure Food Environment

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VietNamNet Bridge – Though Vietnam is an agricultural country with 70 percent of its population living in rural areas, agriculture insurance has not developed. Phung Dac Loc, Secretary General of the Vietnam Insurance Association, talks about the issue.

Thoi Bao Kinh Te Saigon: Could you please tell us about the proportion of agriculture insurance in the non-life insurance sector in Vietnam?

Phung Dac Loc: Agriculture insurance premiums in Vietnam are inconsiderable compared with total non-life insurance premiums. The premiums in 2009 were modest at 1.7 billion dong, while total non-life insurance premiums were 13,644 billion dong. The figure was 958 million dong in the first half of 2010 vs. 8241 billion dong.

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Japan Agribusiness service provides proprietary medium term price forecasts for key commodities, including corn, wheat, rice, sugar, cocoa, coffee, soy and milk; in addition to newly-researched competitive intelligence on leading agribusiness producers, traders and suppliers; in-depth analysis of latest industry developments; and essential industry context on Japan’s agribusiness service.

Despite having an advanced level of mechanisation and high yields, Japanese agriculture is largely unprofitable and is able to supply less than 40% of the country’s food needs. In this new Japan Agribusiness Report for Q1 2009, we examine the challenges that the agriculture sector in Japan faces over the coming years.

Between 1960 and 2005 Japan’s food self sufficiency in a calorie basis fell from 73% to 40%. Over the same period, the share of agriculture as a proportion of GDP dropped from 9% to 1% and the area of agricultural land fell from 6.09mn hectares (ha) to 4.60mn ha.

While Japanese agriculture has enjoyed some successes, such as achieving self sufficiency in milk and rice production, farming has never really been profitable without protection from imports and heavy government support in the form of subsidies and price supports. Even production of the key staple rice has fallen over the last two decades as consumption has dropped.

Read the full story at Business Wire

Prof. Shigeki Toyama of Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology’s Graduate School of Engineering is close to perfecting a robot suit that could considerably reduce the physical burden of farmwork on elderly farmers.

People aged 65 and older are a key pillar of the agricultural work force, accounting for about 60 percent of the agricultural population in Japan. Development of the robot suit may come as welcome news to such elderly farmers.

While agricultural machines such as tractors and rice planters have reduced farmers’ physical burdens, many kinds of work still depend on manual labor, such as harvesting fruits and vegetables or pruning the branches of fruit-bearing trees.

Read the full story at Psyorg.com

Vedan Vietnam, which makes food additives including monosodium glutamate (known as MSG), reportedly discharged waste water in such quantities into the local river that it killed the ecosystem. Thousands of fish and shrimp farmers claimed the toxic waters killed their catch and ruined farmland along the river’s banks. Vedan has admitted responsibility and offered compensation worth US$11.5 million to farmers in three provinces.

Presenter: Bo Hill
Speakers: Huang, Vietnam Farmers Union; Le Viet Hung, director, Natural Resources and Environment Department, Dong Nai, Vietnam

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Read the full story at Democracy Now

VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnamese coffee producers apply different standards that are not applied throughout the world. As a result, Vietnamese coffee exporters suffer from a competitive disadvantage in the world market.

Numerous meetings and workshops discussing Vietnamese coffee standards on coffee export products have been organized over the last ten years. However, the problems still persist.

The Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association (Vicofa) has just organized one more workshop on the issue. The association once again called for the application of international standards for coffee exports.

Read the full story at Vietnam Bridge

Korea’s middle class is in danger. Each round of new statistics reports more Koreans falling into the lower classes. With unemployment on a persistent rise, households are struggling to get by. At the same time, the country’s conglomerates are reporting record profits. Incomes at the top are growing while opportunities for job seekers are shrinking. The gap between rich and poor is growing. If some factions of the Korean government and business community have their way, this growing in inequality may accelerate to an unprecedented level.

A high ranking Korean diplomat told the Chinese press that the two countries will likely begin negotiations on a free trade agreement in 2011. Korea wants a free trade agreement to compete for the Chinese market in semi-conductors and electronics with Taiwan, after the Taiwanese signed the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement with the mainland in June.

The bill will face opposition from small and medium-sized manufacturing firms, as well as farmers and fishermen. A free trade agreement that would expose Korean firms to low Chinese labor costs. Cheap imports would be disastrous for domestic industry. If workers in these sectors lose their ability to compete, they will struggle to earn a living in an economy that demands education and specialized skills. Even well educated candidates are struggling in the current job market.

Read the full story at JoongAng Daily

Jakarta. Indonesia has been experiencing its most extreme weather conditions in recorded history, meteorologists warned on Wednesday as torrential rains continued to pound the capital.

All regions across the archipelago have been experiencing abnormal and often catastrophic weather, an official from the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) said.

“We have reached a super-extreme level of weather this year, the first time in our history, and this is much worse than what we experienced back in 1998, when the La Nina caused extreme weather in the country,” Edvin Aldrian warned.

Read the full story at Jakarta Globe

Jakarta. Local flour prices could see increases as steep as 20 percent due to supply shortages from Russia and Turkey, the Indonesian Association of Sugar and Flour Traders (Apegti) has predicted.

“Prices have gone up 10 percent due to increasing demand during Ramadan and are likely to rise 20 percent after the festivities as Russia and Turkey are cutting back on exports,” Apegti chairman Natsir Mansyur said on Sunday.

He said Russia, the world’s third-largest wheat exporter, had cut exports because bad weather had disrupted production.

Read the full story at Jakarta Globe

HA NOI — Rice exporters are facing difficulties negotiating export prices due to domestic rice price increases, said the Viet Nam Food Association.

The association said this increase had made farmers happy but brought concerns to exporters. The exporters would have more difficulty in confirming export contracts because they could not compete with rival countries.

Over the last two weeks, rice prices have risen by VND500-1,000 per kilo to VND4,100-4,400 for low-quality rice, VND4,800 per kilo for medium-quality rice, and VND5,500 per kilo for high-quality rice.

Read the full story at Viet Nam news

Each year, Vietnam produces 180,000 tonnes of tea including 130,000 tonnes for export, earning US$79 million. Currently, it ranks fifth in the world in both production and export volume.

Over the past 15 years, the tea sector has surpassed its set targets for cultivated acreage, productivity and export volume. But export tea prices are lower than those in other countries such as India, Sri Lanka, and Kenya.

Vietnam has a total area of 120,000 hectares of tea grown in 34 provinces, mostly in the northern mountainous and central highland regions.

In 2009, the average price of tea in those countries was US$2.43 per kilo while Vietnamese tea stood at US$1.23 per kilo.

Between 1998 and this year, the world’s average tea price increased by 18 percent while Vietnam’s tea price fell by 20 percent.

Red the full story at VOV News

At the same time, however, the Chinese government is setting up “innovation parks for Taiwanese farmers” and “experimental areas for cross-strait agricultural cooperation” with the intention of attracting skilled personnel, animal and plant species, technology and capital in an attempt to emulate the Taiwanese experience.

The resulting agricultural products would have the advantages of Taiwanese species, realistic pricing and stable supply. They would attract Chinese consumers far more than agricultural products from Taiwan, and the negative impact on Taiwanese farmers would by far surpass the advantages that would come from the import tax exemptions offered on 18 products.

Read the full story at Taipei Times

Deputy district governor In Savrith said that officers from Royal Cambodian Armed Forces Military Region 5 had allowed 21 families to resume cultivating their crops yesterday, though a final agreement would not be reached until later this week.

“I don’t think there will be a problem because Military Region 5 has already agreed to accept the return of another group of farmers,” he said.

On July 8, 58 families were given permission to resume farming on a 390-hectare plot in Samlot’s Kampong Lpov commune.

A total of 78 families claim that they have farmed the land since 2005, and that since 2009 soldiers from Military Region 5 have been trying to force them off the land.

Read the full story at The Phnom Penh Post

[Authors note: Dr Philip Revatha (Ray) Wijewardene, who passed away on August 18 aged 86, spent a lifetime being unpigeonholeable – which won him many admirers and a few detractors. Despite being an accomplished engineer, aviator, inventor and Olympian, he chose to introduce himself as a farmer and mechanic ‘who still got his hands dirty’. Unpretentious and always enthusiastic, he was one man who somehow managed to have his head (literally) in the clouds and his feet firmly on the ground.

Read the full story at Ground Views

Asean rice millers are joining hands rather than competing in their bid to dominate the global rice trade but some cast doubts on whether the move is in the best interest of farmers,

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) will continue to keep its high profile in the global rice trade with a decision to form rice millers’ alliance, a fresh co-operation that aims to strengthen production and stabilise the prices of rice exported from the bloc.

The co-operation would pool the capacities of rice millers among Asean members, which together produce 25% of the world’s total output of 448 million tonnes and supplies up to 65% of the 29-million-tonne global rice trade. Two of the group’s members, Thailand and Vietnam, also rank the biggest and second biggest rice exporters respectively.

The move came after Asean has done away with the import tariffs on many farm products including rice. The six original Asean member countries _ Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Brunei _ have applied the scheme since the start of this year.

Read the full story at Bangkok Post

Do-nothing’ or minimal interference is a radical idea. Especially for a civilisation obsessed with jumping from one complexity to another while simultaneously idealising simplicity. In 1983, a group of 20 farmers in Rasulia, a small village near Hoshangabad in Madhya Pradesh, was trying to find an alternative to chemical-intensive agriculture. Since 1978, they had been battling the legacy of the Green Revolution — hybrid seeds, pesticides, fertilisers — to redeem the promise of rishi kheti (farming as practiced by ancient sages), a practice that involves letting nature take its course. They had been successful. But there was more to be done, or rather undone. What that was, they weren’t sure. But they were open to learning.

Read the full story at DNA

PRIME Minister Hun Sen announced yesterday that the government would guarantee 50 percent of commercial bank lending to rice producers in a bid to increase Cambodia’s exports of the grain to a million tonnes by 2015.

Speaking at a Phnom Penh unveiling of the government’s new rice production and export policies yesterday, he said borrowers would still have to repay loans, but the state would cover 50 percent of defaulters’ payments.

“We decided to create this policy in order to encourage all commercial banks to provide loans to be used for expanding paddy production and rice exports without worrying,” he said.

Read the full story at The Phnom Penh Post

Read the full story at Japan Today