This book, “Shaping the Asian Peasant Agenda: Solidarity Building Towards Sustainable Rural Development in Asian Rural Communities”, portray the perspectives of AFA and AsiaDHRRA on the agrarian and agricultural situation in their own countries and of the sub-region. It contains country reports, workshop results and lectures of keynote speakers and resource persons, presented during the sub-regional conferences conducted by AFA from August till October of 2003.

Contents: 

• The Seikatsu Club Consumers Cooperative: A Unique Producer-Consumer Relationship in Japan
• PDAP’s Push for Organic Rice: Enhancing the Survival of Filipino Rice Farmers in a Liberalized Economic
• Setting Green Net: A Trailblazer in Organic Marketing in Southeast Asia
• The Fair Trade System: Focus on the Oxfam-GB Model
• Emergency or Expediency?: A Study of Emergency Rice Reserve Schemes in Asia 

During the Millennium Summit of the United Nations (UN) in September 2000, 147 Head of States and Governments and 191 member-states adopted the Millennium Declaration. The Declaration embodies structured development goals and targets. The adopting countries committed to achieve its targets to reduce poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women by 2015. Expert studies projected the resources required to attain the goals and what are expected to be available.

Agrarian reform, or AR, is the redistribution of public and private agricultural lands, regardless of produce and tenurial arrangement, to landless farmers and regular farm workers, to include support services and other arrangements alternative to distribution of land such as production/profi t sharing, labor organization, or distribution of shares of stock.

A Special Product (SP) is an agricultural product “out of the WTO” in that they are not subject to tariff reductions, i. e. Countries can keep the right to maintain protective tariffs on certain agricultural products that are essential for food security, rural development, and farmers’ livelihoods. The G33 proposal is for 10% of developing country products to be exempt from tariff reductions, with an additional 10% of product lines to have limited tariff reductions. This would be somewhere in the range of 300 products. The US counter-proposal is for a mere 5 products!