June 3 , 2024 , Bonn, Germany – As the Asian Farmers’ Association (AFA) continues to make efforts to raise […]
Vietnam's ecologically sensitive wetlands, which produce much of the country's food staples, including rice, fish and fowl, are now beginning to suffer the effects of over-exploitation.
''Environmental protection and economic development sometimes contradict each other,'' Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment (NRE) Pham Khoi Nguyen said, spelling out the government's dilemma.
But Nguyen indicated that the time had come for drastic measures to protect a vast region of shimmering paddies and mudflats, stretching from the Red River valley in the north to the Mekong Delta in the south, which ''plays a crucial role in ensuring the national food supply but is also home to delicate ecosystems''.
The squeeze on farmers' profit margins is likely to tighten as supermarket chains become as concerned with safety and quality as they now are with cost...
The good news for Asia's fruit and vegetable growers is that the region's rapidly expanding supermarket chains are particularly keen on selling fresh produce. In marketing jargon, fruits and vegetables are a "destination category", one that attracts consumers and builds customer loyalty. The bad news is that modern food retailing brings with it fierce competition, reduced profit margins, demanding quality standards and procurement systems that focus increasingly on an elite group of "preferred suppliers". In this sink-or-swim environment, many traditional fruit and vegetable wholesalers - and millions of small-scale producers - must either adapt or face exclusion from the market.
The Asian Farmers Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA) will be conducting an in-person training to capacitate its country data […]
Industrial agriculture is devastating our land, water, and air, and is now threatening the sustainability of the biosphere. Its massive chemical and biological inputs cause widespread environmental havoc as well as human disease and death. Its monoculturing reduces the diversity of our plants and animals. Its habitat destruction endangers wildlife. Its factory farming practices cause untold animal suffering. Its centralized corporate ownership destroys farm communities around the world, leading to mass poverty and hunger. The industrial agriculture system is clearly unsustainable. It has truly become a fatal harvest.
The $250,000 World Food Prize, considered by many the Nobel Prize of food and agriculture, was awarded today to an Indian scientist credited with launching a "blue revolution" (a rapid increase in fish production) in the developing world.
Modadugu Gupta has spent 30 years creating a cheap and ecologically sustainable system of small-scale fish-farming using abandoned ditches and seasonally flooded fields and water holes smaller than the average swimming pool.
One of the important recent concepts in agricultural development has been the concern for sustainability. This concern originated with the high tech, high input and high yielding systems of the developed world and its meaning and appropriateness to the developing world. The presentation represents some reflections on the application of sustainability to the developing countries of Asia.
Sustainable agriculture is defined as agriculture that balances the need for essential agricultural commodities such as food, fibre, etc. with the necessity of protecting the physical environment and public health, the foundation of agriculture.
Nine representatives from the Asian Farmers’ Association (AFA) member farmers’ organizations and AFA Secretariat, namely Mr. Lilaraj Raut, AFA […]
