Pequeños agricultores

The impacts of large-scale agricultural investments on rural communities’ land ownership, food security, productivity, income, and access to education and health differ within and between communities depending on business and government influence.

A severe outbreak of Côte d’Ivoire lethal yellowing disease (CILY) has been wreaking havoc throughout coconut farms since 2013.

Widespread palm oil production causes much controversy due to its negative impacts in the tropics. But whatever is said about it, it is big business and getting bigger by the day due to increasing global demands. Alongside this, the size and depth of the social and environmental debates surrounding palm oil production are also growing.

Processes of globalization have generated new opportunities for smallholders to participate in profitable global agro-commodity markets. This participation however is increasingly being shaped by differentiated capabilities to comply with emerging public and private quality and safety standards.

The first agricultural census (AC) was conducted in 2004. The AC 2014 was the second AC, conducted in conjunction with the 2014 General Population Census  (GPC).

In fishing communities the contentious acquisition of land close to water bodies is especially relevant. Water grabbing has serious implications for basic human rights including the right to water, food, health, livelihood, and self-determination. Land grabbing is driven by the desire to control and use water and fisheries resources.

This is the first results-based country strategic opportunities programme (RB-COSOP) for the country, and covers the period 2017-2021.

The COSOP draws on national strategies and guidelines for agricultural and rural development, an analysis of three years of country programme experience, and the 2016 Social, Environmental and Climate Assessment Procedures study.

On February 2, 2017, Philippine Environment Secretary Gina Lopez, who has the full backing of the country’s controversial president Duterte, announced the closure of 23 large-scale mining operations.

In 2012, the Government of Myanmar passed the Farmland Law and the Vacant, Fallow, Virgin Land Law, with an aim to increase investment in land through the formalization of a land market.

The Cambodian government redistributed 1.2 million hectares, some revoked from economic land concessions (ELC), to more than 710,000 smallholders as private ownerships (2013-2014). The paper outlines key steps for granting new land concessions and improving the efficiency of existing ELCs (or similar large-scale state land licences).

Public lands accounted for 80% of the country area until a decade ago. As Cambodia emerged from three decades of civil war and internal strife, the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) has granted more than 10% of the country area or 50% of the cultivatable land as large scale “Economic Land Concessions” (ELCs) to private companies, mostly foreign owned, in a mostly rigged process.

About two-thirds of the developing world’s 3 billion rural people live in about 475 million small farm households, working on land plots smaller than 2 hectares. 1 Many are poor and food insecure and have limited access to markets and services. Their choices are constrained, but they farm their land and produce food for a substantial proportion of the world’s population.