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agriculture | farmers | food

"Via Campesina, from anti-WTO to anti-FTA"
21-Feb-2008 VOP
Interview with Jun Gi-Hoan, General Secretary of Korean Peasants League
Striking farmers shut access to Peru’s Machu Picchu
19-Feb-2008 Reuters
Peruvian farmers upset over a free trade deal with the United States blocked rail service to the famous Inca ruins at Machu Picchu on Monday and paralyzed vast swaths of the Andean country by halting traffic on key highways.
US-Korea Understanding on Agricultural Biotechnology (2007)
18-Feb-2008 Korean Advanced Farmers Federation
Negotiated on the sidelines of the US-Korea FTA, in March 2007.
Mexican farmers cite surge in corn imports from US
13-Feb-2008 Hoover’s
A group mainly representing Mexican family farmers denounced Monday that imports of white corn from the United States increased 384 percent after last month’s NAFTA-mandated end to trade barriers in agriculture.
GM trials in India threaten trade ties
13-Feb-2008 Times of India
India finds itself increasingly on the defensive in agricultural trade for permitting field trials across the country in a host of genetically modified food crops — rice, brinjal, okra, potato, tomato and groundnuts — and thereby exposing conventional crops to the risk of transgenic contamination. A case in point is a rather dodgy no-contamination certificate that the regulator, Genetic Engineering Approval Committee, was forced to give two months ago in response to a restriction imposed by Russia on import of rice, groundnuts and sesame seeds from India.
Corporate globalisation: Standing at the end of the road
13-Feb-2008 CounterPunch
Corporate globalization, savagely embodied by NAFTA, is not just a threat to Mexican farmers and rural villagers. The economic, health, and social damage created by industrial agriculture, corporate globalization, and the patenting and gene-splicing of transgenic plants and animals, are inexorably leading to universal "bioserfdom " for farmers, deteriorating health for consumers, a destabilized climate (energy intensive industrial agriculture and long-distance food transportation and processing account, directly or indirectly, for 40% of all climate-disrupting greenhouse gases), tropical deforestation, and a rapid depletion of oil supplies.
Mexican farmers stage protest over US imports
1-Feb-2008 Reuters
Thousands of Mexican farmers, some herding cows, flooded into the capital on Thursday and set a tractor on fire to demand government protection against cheap US farm imports under NAFTA.
Food sovereignty and free-trade agreements
31-Jan-2008 Via Campesina
From 11th to 13th January 2008, 21 delegates and members of Via Campesina, from the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Peru, South Korea, Norway, France, Haiti, Mali, Italy, the United States, Mozambique, Turkey, the Basque Country and Nepal, met in Dijon for a strategic seminar on the theme “Food Sovereignty and Free-Trade Agreements” convened and organised by the Via Campesina’s Food Sovereignty work committee.
NAFTA awakens the ghost of Pancho Villa
27-Jan-2008 Newspaper Tree
Convened two years before the 100th anniversary of the 1910 Mexican Revolution and the 200th anniversary of the 1810 War for Independence, Mexico’s latest farmer protest is now gathering force with strong historical and political overtones. Farmers intend to follow the same route that Pancho Villa took on his 1914 march into Mexico City, and on which an anti-NAFTA protest was conducted by protestors on horseback in 1999
Mexico anti-NAFTA march moves to capital
21-Jan-2008 Prensa Latina
The Mexican farmer march against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will enter Sunday the city of Chihuahua on its way to this capital.
Agriculture takes a toll on Japanese economy
14-Jan-2008 New Straits Times
Free-trade deals had been the linchpin of a perceived strategy to break long-standing policy deadlocks in Japan, and to pry open agriculture to market mechanisms and competition. But uncertainty has set in.
Mexico: Catastrophic outlook for NAFTA; protests being organized
11-Jan-2008 Cattle Network
"The competition is not about Mexican agriculture against American agriculture, but about a Mexican worker against large companies like Cargill, Conagra or ADM."
Farmers protest all over Mexico
10-Jan-2008 Prensa Latina
Farmers from the Mexican states of Durango, Chiapas, and Chihuahua carried out street protests and roadblocks Wednesday in rejection of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Mexico workers, Church slam NAFTA
4-Jan-2008 Prensa Latina
Mexican farmers and trade unions are protesting and carrying out legal actions against the North American Free Trade Agreement, for considering it a mortal blow against the national agricultural sector. The Catholic Church warned in official declarations that the elimination of taxes on subsidized imports of corn, bean, powder milk, and sugar may well force a large number of Mexican farmers to leave their lands.
Mexican farmers block border with US to protest free trade accord
2-Jan-2008 Xinhua
Some 200 Mexican farmers blocked on Tuesday the Cordoba-Americas bridge linking the country with the United States to protest the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Human wall on Mexico-US border to protest NAFTA
29-Dec-2007 Prensa Latina
On January 1, Mexican farmers and social groups will make a human wall on the border checkpoint in Ciudad Juarez to protest against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Mexican lawmakers fear social destabilization
24-Dec-2007 Prensa Latina
The president of the Agriculture Committee at the House of Deputies, Hector Padilla, said on Sunday that the agricultural chapter of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will cause social destabilization in Mexico.
Seoul, New Delhi to resume trade talks in April
24-Dec-2007 Korea Times
South Korea is holding back on farm products
NAFTA at fourteen: Historic Mexico-USA showdown looms
24-Dec-2007 Mexidata
As the 14th anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) fast approaches, rural opponents of the trinational pact are stepping up their mobilizations on both sides of the US-Mexico border. Mexican farm groups and their supporters are gearing up for border-wide actions on January 1, 2008 to protest the final elimination of tariffs on corn, bean, sugar and powdered milk.
Duty-free US corn imports force Mexico GMO debate
20-Dec-2007 Reuters
Cheap US corn will flood into Mexico in January when trade barriers are lifted under NAFTA, pitting local farmers against each other over how to protect the crop that has fed Mexico for thousands of years.