PAN AP Resource Materials

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Endangered: Small Rice Farmers - The Impact of the Agreement on Agriculture on Small Rice Farmers in Thailand

2007-11-01

Rice has been an integral part of Thai food and culture from ancient times. Historical evidence shows that from the 7th to 12th centuries (or the 12th to 17th Buddhist centuries), glutinous rice, commonly known as “sticky rice”, was planted for domestic consumption in the northeastern region, especially in the highlands. Later, rice cultivation spread to the lowlands of the central region, where white rice, which was generally grown for the market, was introduced.
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Endangered: Small Rice Farmers - The Impact of the Agreement on Agriculture on Small Rice Farmers in the Philippines

2007-11-01

The Philippines has abundant natural resources, which makes it ideal for agricultural production. One-third of the country’s land area is fertile and suitable for agricultural production and cattle grazing. The economy is predominantly agrarian. Almost half of the country’s 30 million hectares is reserved for agriculture and designated for the cultivation of traditional crops such as rice and corn and export and cash crops such as fruits, vegetables and cut-flowers.
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Endangered: Small Rice Farmers - The Impact of the Agreement on Agriculture on Small Rice Farmers in Malaysia

2007-11-01

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Uruguay Round Agreement, which includes the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), came into effect on 1 January 1995. It includes specific commitments by World Trade Organisation (WTO) member governments to improve access to their markets and reduce trade-distorting subsidies in agriculture. In other words, international agricultural trade was put under much stronger GATT discipline, including capped and reduced export subsidies, import barriers and domestic support1.
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Pesticides and Breast Cancer: A Wake Up Call

2007-10-30

Breast cancer is by far the most common cause of cancer in women throughout the world, and incidence is escalating in the Asia Pacific region. It is time for systemic change in our attitudes to pesticides: we need to implement the precautionary principle and substitute safer ecological methods of managing pests, weeds and disease, for those pesticides exposed here as having the potential to cause breast cancer.
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Hybrid Rice in Asia: Sowing the Seeds of Dependency

2007-07-29

Over the past four decades, technological innovations in rice breeding have become a frontier for increasing rice productivity in Asia. Dubbed as the Green Revolution, the development and massive promotion of the so-called "modern" or "high-yielding varieties (HYV)" or "high-input varieties (HIV)" with a combined package of technologies such as synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, mechanized land preparation and irrigation have transformed the landscape of most rice farms in Asia. To read more, please click on and download from the link below.
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Presentation at the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM)

2007-07-27

Presentation on the work of PAN AP on pesticides issue.
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Braving Bullets: Central Mindanao farmers struggle for genuine land reform

2007-06-30

While the rest of the farmers headed to the rice fi elds, three-month-old pregnant Noralyn Galan was advised by her husband Rafael to stay home. But Noralyn couldn’t stand being away. She had to go and help. June 22, 2007 was no ordinary day. Prevented by security guards from tilling their lands on account of an allegedly “expired” lease agreement with the Central Mindanao University (CMU), farmers have been living on virtually empty stomachs for the last three months. Finally, they decided, their hunger was greater than their fear.
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Against All Odds: A Dalit Village’s Fight Against Industrial Aquaculture

2007-06-30

If you go through police records, Kolathur would appear to be a village of criminals. Th e village is situated on banks of Buckingham canal in Kancheepuram District in Tamil Nadu. Just in the last two years, more than 40 young men from this nondescript village of 4000 on the East Coast Road connecting Chennai and Pondicherry have been charged by the police with various mild to serious off ences. Villagers say the charges are false and motivated.
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WTO’S Renewed Attack On Food Sovereignty

2007-06-10

The WTO talks are now at a crucial stage and particularly threaten Southern agriculture and food sovereignty. The WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) reached at the end of the Uruguay Round has already gone far in opening up and destroying domestic agriculture sectors in its decade of implementation. The AoA being renegotiated during the current Doha Round, resumed in early 2007, aims to bring this destructive process even further forward.
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Intellectual Property Rights and Rice

2007-03-29

Rice is the staple food for half the people on Earth, and is at the heart of Asia's diverse cultures. Yet its future, along with that of millions of small-scale rice farmers, many of them women, is in jeopardy. Transnational corporations (TNCs) are shifting control of rice production away from farming communites which have grown and nurtured countless rice varieties over centuries.

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