In 2008, Ka Lita, a woman rice farmer in the Philippines, stood in a long line to buy rice that was being sold by the National Food Authority (NFA), the government’s rice trading agency. She had been standing under the hot sun for several hours, but she had no choice but to wait for her turn to buy rice from the NFA. The rice being sold by the government’s rice trading agency was the only rice that she could afford with her money.

The issue of climate change was already being discussed in the 1980s as scientists raised alarm over the world's increasing emission of manmade green house gases (GHGs), the main cause of global warming. In 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), began to look into the effects of manmade GHG emissions on climate change. Following the release of the IPCC findings in 1990, the United Nations initiated the process of convening countries with the goal of reducing man-made GHG emissions and helping countries adapt to climate change.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been trying hard to go into free trade agreements (FTAs) with different countries. It believes that this will increase trade and help members sell their export products to more markets in other countries. It also wants to make ASEAN the world's center of agricultural production. But in opening up markets and increasing trade, more imported goods from other countries can also come in.

WHAT IS MEANT BY AGRIBUSINESS?

Agribusiness as used in this paper refers to very big corporations that produce, process, trade, and market agricultural food products and agricultural inputs. Examples are corporations that produce inputs, such as seeds and fertilizers, and those that produce for supermarkets and retail chains. Transnational agribusiness companies are those that operate in the agriculture sector of many countries, usually with a huge volume of business.

This issue paper is about what is known as the “global financial crisis,” which is said to have affected the economies in Europe and North America and caused massive loss of jobs and bankruptcy in these countries. For some of us here in the developing world, the global financial crisis may seem very far from us and therefore, has no effect on us. We may even think that it is something that only concerns economists and the business sector.

Our unsustainable way of life is causing a crisis in our environment at a global scale. Climate change is threatening the future of our planet. The crisis is largely our own doing, and we also have the means to solve it, if we are willing to act on it. Farmers, fishers, and indigenous peoples, who live close to nature for their survival, are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. But they also have a special role to play in addressing climate change. What they need for survival - sustainable and ecological friendly practices - are also what are needed to heal our planet.

AFA Cases on Large Scale Land Acquisition in Asia

The Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Development (AFA) and Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (WOCAN) agreed to undertake an outcome-based evaluation of the ten provincial training activities conducted from May –December 2010, under a twoyear Rural Women’s Leadership Project (RWLP), supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) through the Government of Norway.

Rising food prices, increasing climate instability and food riots have sparked profound political changes around the world and put agriculture high on the international agenda. What kind of agriculture is best suited to respond to those challenges, however, is the subject of profound disagreement. Too much of the current policy debate on food security, climate change and agriculture assumes that industrial agriculture and related biotechnology are the only options for feeding a growing global population.

Addressing the problem of hunger in a world where food production systems, particularly in developing countries, are being eroded and undermined by climate change is one of the most important challenges of our time. Studies by the Food and Agriculture organization (FAO), Oxfam and the Asian Development Bank, among others, underscore the significance of climate change impacts on agriculture and food production (FAO 2007, Oxfam 2009, ADB 2009).

There is a need to distinguish between small-scale, subsistence family-based farming, small to medium scale businesses in the agriculture sector that is the predominant mode in the global south on one hand and; the operations of agribusiness (whether a large local corporation or transnational corporation) found in the agricultural sector of many countries that are typically large in size and capital on the other.

This research is intended to help contribute to this articulation process by identifying and consolidating small farmers' trade agenda in five countries, namely Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. These countries represent a good mix of both net agricultural exporters and importers, providing the paper with a balanced perspective of looking at trade and its impact on small farmers. The agenda of small farmers in these countries formed the bases for the formulation of their trade agenda in ASEAN. The research is divided into three parts.