GRAIN is a small international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.

What's new in English | Qué hay de nuevo en español
Les mises à jour en français

Seedling July 2010

July 2010

In  this GRAIN 20th anniversary issue:

- Editorial and the whole issue in PDF format

- Twenty years of fighting for seeds and food sovereignty 

- Global agribusiness: two decades of plunder

- Haiti’s farmers call for a break with neoliberalism

- and Seeds 

Click here to go to the publication

GM in the public eye in Asia

May 2010

Public is meant to be for people. But, as in evident with Bt crop research in Asia, “public” agricultural research is becoming less about the needs of ordinary people and small farmers and more about scientific control and corporate interests. The recent controversy around Bt brinjal/eggplant in parts of South and South-east Asia, together with the Bt rice research in China's public sector, show that governments and corporations, be they in competition or co-operation, are pushing the same GM crops into Asia's farms and food supply. This is decisively changing the perception of public agricultural research. People are realising that their public agricultural universities and national research institutes may not really be on their side.

Click here to go to the publication

The World Bank in the hot seat

May 2010

A curious thing happened last week. A lot of people were under the impression that the World Bank was going to release its long-awaited study on global land grabs in April 2010. This is what GRAIN was told. It's what many journalists were told. And it's what those involved in producing the study expected. But it didn't happen. So what's holding the Bank back?

Click here to go to the publication

Seedling April 2010

April 2010

 Turning African farmland over to big business by GRAIN

Land grabs threaten Anuak  GRAIN interviews Nyikaw Ochalla 

Pastoralism an untold tale of adaptation and survival by GRAIN

Watershed cattle by John Wilson

Confronting the FAO to stop GMOs by GRAIN

and more....

Click here to go to the publication

Stop land grabbing now

April 2010

Say NO to the principles of “responsible” agro-enterprise investment promoted by the World Bank.

State and private investors, from Citadel Capital to Goldman Sachs, are leasing or buying up tens of millions of hectares of farmlands in Asia, Africa and Latin America for food and fuel production. This land grabbing is a serious threat for the food sovereignty of our peoples and the right to food of our rural communities. In response to this new wave of land grabbing, the World Bank is promoting a set of seven principles to guide such investments and make them successful.

Click here to go to the publication

Feeding the corporate coffers: why hybrid rice continues to fail Asia’s small farmers

April 2010

For decades now, hybrid rice has been promoted across Asia as a silver bullet for hunger. But a new collaborative briefing published by GRAIN and several other organisations in Asia and the Pacific* examines how hybrid rice has consistently failed Asia’s small farmers over the past decade. From Bangladesh to China, from the Philippines to Indonesia, the promised increased yield has been elusive in farmers’ fields, and the expansion of hybrid rice is now being linked to a recent upsurge of outbreaks of planthoppers across Asia. Hybrid rice is not being promoted for agricultural development but for the control over farming that it offers and the profits that it generates for the seed and agro-chemical companies. This briefing looks at the main players behind the hybrid rice push, from the big transnational corporations like Bayer and DuPont and their partnerships with public research centres, such as IRRI, to the Chinese seed companies working with their government to develop hybrid rice overseas in countries such as Liberia, Uzbekistan, Papua New Guinea, and Timor Leste. It unpacks the hidden agenda behind hybrid rice and lays out the devastating consequences for small farmers if the push is not stopped.

Click here to go to the publication

Land grabbing in Latin America

March 2010

Right now communities in Latin America, as around the world, are suffering a new kind of invasion of their territories. Millions of hectares of farmland in Latin America have been taken over by these foreign investors over the past few years for the production of food crops and agrofuels for export. Much of the money comes from US and European pension funds, banks, private equity groups, and wealthy individuals, and it is being channelled through special farmland investment vehicles set up by both foreign and local companies.

Click here to go to the publication

Seedling January 2010

January 2010

Unravelling the 'miracle' of Malawi’s green revolution
Malawi’s green revolution success story has been lauded around the world. While it is good to see a government investing in local food production, it is doubtful whether the achievements will be sustainable unless radical changes are implemented. Above all, land needs to be redistributed so that farmers have holdings that are big enough to produce surpluses, and the government needs to move away from its narrow focus on chemical fertlisers and hybrid maize seeds.

 Africa's land and family farms - up for grabs? by Joan Baxter

Agricultural workers still struggle for their rights by Sue Longley

What 'financialisation' means for food workers by Peter Rossman

Click here to go to the publication

Remembering La Gloria

January 2010

New television documentary traces origins of the H1N1 pandemic back to pig farms in Mexico

This past November people from all over Mexico gathered in the Valley of Perote, where the village of La Gloria is located, for the fifth Asamblea Nacional de Afectados Ambientales [National Assembly of Environmentally Affected]. It is a large, periodical gathering of a network of communities and organisations struggling against environmental devastation in Mexico. The location for this most recent gathering was chosen in recognition of the importance of the local struggles against the large pig farms in the area, which had gained national and worldwide attention when the first human cases of pandemic H1N1 swine flu were traced back to La Gloria in April 2009. This was the second Asamblea for the people of La Gloria and the first for an alliance of communities in the Valley of Perote who have now joined La Gloria in resisting factory farming. Out of the swine flu crisis, the struggle against factory farming has grown stronger, moving from isolated local resistance to a major component of a national movement. A new documentary on the H1N1 pandemic and factory farming, based on the experiences of La Gloria and the neighbouring communities, now brings this struggle to an international audience and puts factory farming back on centre stage in the story of the H1N1 pandemic.

Click here to go to the publication

Climate crisis - Copenhagen - putting agriculture front and centre in the discussions over climate change

December 2009

On December 15th, La Via Campesina and a number of other groups will be leading a day of action in Copenhagen to put agriculture front and centre in the discussions over climate change. Although the official Convention is sure to disappoint, these groups will be carrying a message of hope. What they want the world to know is that, in their on-going struggle for food sovereignty, there is a way out of the climate crisis.

Click here to go to the publication

GRAIN statement at the joint GRAIN-La Via Campesina media briefing

November 2009

Stop the global land grab!

A press briefing prepared at the People's Food Sovereignty Forum held in Rome.

At GRAIN, we are extremely concerned that today's global land grab is making the food crisis worse. It pushes an agriculture geared toward large scale monocultures and fossil fuels; not an agriculture that will feed everyone. It's an agriculture that feeds speculative profits for a few and more poverty for the rest. Of course we need investment. But investment in food sovereignty, in a million local markets and in the four billion rural people who currently produce most of the food that our societies rely on -- not in a few mega-farms controlled by a few mega-landlords.

Click here to go to the publication

The new farm owners

October 2009

Corporate investors lead the rush for control over overseas farmland

With all the talk about "food security," and distorted media statements like "South Korea leases half of Madagascar's land," it may not be evident to a lot of people that the lead actors in today's global land grab for overseas food production are not countries or governments but corporations. So much attention has been focused on the involvement of states, like Saudi Arabia, China or South Korea. But the reality is that while governments are facilitating the deals, private companies are the ones getting control of the land. And their interests are simply not the same as those of governments.

Click here to go to the publication