The World Trade Organization (WTO) hailed the recent Hong Kong Sixth Ministerial Meeting last December 2005 as a positive movement towards the conclusion of the Doha Development Round. The round was supposedly geared towards ensuring that trade contributes to the development objectives of least developed and developing countries.

Rural livelihoods are far more multi-locational than is often assumed with many rural people spending a part of the year outside the village working in non-farm occupations. Contrary to early theory, persistent circular or seasonal migration within countries or between neighbouring countries is emerging as the migration pattern of the poor. Nowhere is this more evident than in Asia.

Paper targeted at land reform practitioners and stakeholders in government and civil society. Argues that land reform can broadly be divided into land tenure reform and land redistribution. First chapter gives short narrative of key land tenure and land policy issues. These remain politically sensitive, but consensus is emerging on how to deal with them once confusion surrounding private /common property and formal / informal rights is cleared up. Secure property rights should not be confused with full private ’ownership’.

This report examines the situation faced by Karen villagers in Thaton District (known as Doo Tha Htoo in Karen). The district lies in what is officially the northern part of Mon State and also encompasses part of Karen State to the west of the Salween River . Successive Burmese regimes have had strong control over the parts of the district to the west of the Rangoon-Martaban road for many years. They were also able to gain 'defacto' control over the eastern part of the district following the fall of the former Karen National Union (KNU) stronghold at Manerplaw in 1995.

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 

The project aims to support small-scale farmers in the project area in their efforts to adapt their farming practices to anticipated climate change and to enhance their incomes.

Hundreds of millions of people in Asia are dependent on shifting cultivation, yet the practice has tended to be seen in a negative light and discouraged by policy makers. This document challenges prevailing assumptions, arguing that shifting cultivation – if properly practised – is actually a ‘good practice’ system for productively using hill and mountain land, while ensuring conservation of forest, soil, and water resources. Focusing on Eastern Himalayan farmers, it looks at whether there is a need for new, more effective and more socially acceptable policy options that help to improve shi

According to the annual report of Huaphan Provincial Agriculture and Forestry Office (PAFO) (1999), despite land allocation, some villages are still practising shifting cultivation. To address this problem many decrees and regulations on land and land use have been developed and declared. The land allocation (LA) programme is one of these initiatives. So far, no effort has been made to evaluate whether the LA programme could facilitate change in land use and land management. The major objective of this study was to assess the impact of the LA programme on land use and land management.

In 2003 we conducted a study to determine the consequences of feral hog (Sus scrofa) invasions in several ecoregions of Texas. We examined the observations, experiences, and actions of landowners and managers concerning feral hogs on their property. We used purposive sampling of landowners and managers who fit 1 or more of 3 selection criteria. Landowners and managers were either sent a self-administered, mail-out questionnaire or given a copy of the questionnaire during pesticide applicator workshops. There were 775 survey participants.