Hundreds of Venezuelan campesinos shook the country's political landscape in July 2018 when they embarked on an 'admirable' march of over 400 kilometers, on foot, to draw attention to the issues they face in the countryside and demand a meeting with President Maduro. A meeting did take place, with Maduro expressly ordering their concerns be addressed. Working groups were subsequently set up with the vice president's office, but the impetus quickly faded.

A regional workshop on “Strengthening the Accessibility and Visibility of Agricultural and Land Data through the Use of Semantics - AGRIS in Europe and Central Asia” was held by FAO in collaboration with the LandPortal Foundation (the Netherlands) in Moscow, 27-28 June 2019, hosted by the Central Scientific Agricultural Library (CSAL).

AGRIS, or International System for Agricultural Science and Technology, came into being in 1974 on the joint initiative of around 180 FAO member states.

The drugs trade is often portrayed as populated by wealthy individuals. The reality is poor communities targeted for repression, criminalisation and even the death penalty.

Amidst media furore over illicit drug use, Tory leadership favourite Boris Johnson dodged questions today over past drug use, whilst the wheels of Michael Gove’s campaign for the premiership are careering to a halt. Eight of the eleven candidates have admitted to some form of drug consumption, from Hunt’s cannabis infused lassi, to Rory Stewart’s opium smoking in Iran.

LAGOS, Nigeria, Jun 10 2019 (IPS) - As a wife and mother in Nigeria who wanted to support my family and my community, I began my own farm in 2006. When I began, I never could have dreamed that just cultivating the earth would someday lead to my meeting government leaders, and traveling to meet other women from around the world doing their part to make a difference in their own communities.

The United States government announced on Monday it will invest another $160 million in Colombia’s ongoing peace process.

The announcement came during an event with the US Agency for International Development (USAID), where Director for International Development Administrator Mark Green told reporters in Bogota that the funds are meant for the “implementation of peace” and to formalize land ownership of small farmers.

BOGOTA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Guatemala’s subsistence farmers and indigenous people living in poor rural communities are most affected by rising temperatures and unpredictable rainfall linked to climate change, a leading researcher said on Friday.

Poverty makes the Central American country highly vulnerable to the impact of global warming that damages harvests and causes food shortages, said Edwin Castellanos, lead author of a report by the Guatemalan System of Climate Change Sciences (SGCCC).

Zimbabwe is moving forward with a process to compensate former farm owners whose land was taken from them because they were white during the country’s fast-track land reform program (FTLRP).

“The registration process and the list of farmers should be completed by the end of April 2019, after which the interim advance payments will be paid directly to former farm owners by the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural Resettlement,” the government said in a statement.

If the main purpose of government is to provide for the common security of its citizens, surely ensuring the security of the food system must be among its paramount duties.

The United Nations identifies the food crisis as one of the primary and overarching challenges facing the international community today. It is inter-related in complex ways to the current global economic crisis and the longer-term environmental and climate crises that stand before us.

Decades-long legal disputes over land could cost tens of millions of dollars, research says

LONDON - Food companies doing business in Africa risk becoming bogged down in decades-long legal disputes over land that could cost tens of millions of dollars, according to a report released on Monday.

From sugar to coffee and palm oil, agribusiness firms could find that the land they are using is already claimed or occupied by local people, researchers said.

• A new UN Declaration protects peasant rights to land, seeds, and adequate incomes with an emphasis on civil and social rights.
• Peasants, which includes small-scale farmers, rural workers, fishing communities, pastoralists and landless agriculture workers, have been recognized as a vulnerable population with distinct needs for the first time ever.
• By protecting peasant rights, the new status aims to also help reduce climate change and protect biodiversity.

Millions of peasant farmers in the rural areas of Sierra Leone do not own land of their own but have to rent from land owning families. Added to their poverty is the fact that they depend on Shylock money lenders to secure seeds and capital for their farming activities.

At the end of the day, their harvests are not only meagre but most it goes to paying debt and interest that are trapping them in a vicious circle of poverty, which when looked at closely are responsible for the majority of youths abandoning the countryside for life in the city.

Chhattisgarh has set an example by returning land acquired forcefully from over 1,700 farmers for a steel plant. Can other states follow suit?