Farmers' Voices, Farmers' Choices: In the Time of Climate Change (Part 2 of 2)

Watch part 1 here

An introduction into the work we do to assist disadvantaged communities in Laos and Cambodia. 

We have 3 core Programs of development work: Healthy Villages & Local Leadership/ Land & Livelihoods/ Child Protection and Empowerment. 

Please visit our website for more information: https://villagefocus.org/index

The objective of this study is to improve understanding of the implications of climate change for the groundwater systems in coastal Bangladesh. This is achieved by: (a) obtaining available geologic, hydrologic, and geochemical information on coastal aquifers of Bangladesh; (b) developing groundwater flow and salt transport models representing general features and conditions along the coast of Bangladesh; and (c) simulating potential changes in the groundwater systems due to various aspects of human activity and climate change.

Contains a critique of food and land reform policies in South Africa, findings, analysis and recommendations. Findings focus on women and farming: significance, roles and responsibilities, accessing and cultivating land, support from the private and public sector, reflections of emerging women farmers

Many people in the vast rural areas of Africa lack access to financial services, and most commercial banks are not interested in moving into these areas due to their low income levels, lack of scale economies, and poor infrastructure. Also, few banks actually understand the most common economic activity in rural areas: agriculture.

Since the 2008 food price crisis, foreign investors have been acquiring more and more land in poor countries for producing foodstuffs and biofuels for their own use. Such investments have the potential to promote rural development and food security worldwide. By the same token, however, there is the danger of countless small farmers losing their land, of food insecurity increasing in many places, and of social and ecological systems collapsing through pure "land grabbing".

Nerica – New Rice for Africa is the name of the great biotechnological success in rice breeding. What scientists created in the lab using modern methods, namely hybrids of African rice and Asian rice, had already come into being decades ago by chance in West African ?elds.

This report discusses the potential benefits of, and the current challenges for, agricultural land investment in Tanzania and Mozambique. The paper finds that there is little, if any, development potential in these investments. Indeed, the economic growth potential of investments in agricultural land is questionable due to an inadequate regulatory framework governing foreign direct investments (FDI) in the sector.

The transition to a market economy has sparked Vietnam's unprecedented urbanization and industrialization. In order to accommodate the spiraling land demand triggered by urban and economic growth, the Vietnamese government has been using the mechanism of compulsory acquisition at an astounding scale to convert massive amount of agricultural land to urban land for non-agricultural uses. A large number of the country's poorest, most vulnerable citizens have been forced out of their land to make way for development projects, yet, they are also the group that have least benefited from them.

The research team set out to answer three research questions: 1) What are rubber investment’s key features with regard to the investment process, investor identity, location, activities and scale? 2) How was the “upland” landscape originally zoned and mapped as part of the LFA process, and later re-zoned and mapped by local authorities and foreign investors? 3) What are the impacts of rubber investment in upland areas on the land use and livelihoods of the villagers involved?

INTRODUCTION: The following report has been compiled to bring to the attention of a wider audience many of the problems facing the people of Burma, especially its many ethnic nationalities. For many outside observers, Burma’s problems are confined simply to the ongoing incarceration of Nobel Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s democratically elected leader, and many other political prisoners. However, as we hope to show in the following report, this is only one of very many human rights abuses that provide obstacles to the people’s hope for democracy.