Good news for the people of southern Rwanda and Duhamic-Adri, partner of Frères des Hommes in Rwanda! Having been awarded a contract with American and Dutch organisations, the association launched in October 2009 a 1,500 ha reforestation scheme in the Nyaruguru area. These sustainably run micro plantations will help vulnerable people in the area meet their heating needs and create new sources of income, through the commercialisation of charcoal. At long last, the plantations will ensure an (...) Next ...

Many Haitians today have a poor image of Brazil owing to the presence of 1200 Brazilian soldiers on an armed mission for the United Nations, (the United Nations Stabilization Mission In Haiti or the Mission des Nations unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti, MINUSTAH) which received much bad press. To counter this negative image of their country and to prove their solidarity with the Haitians, the Via Campesina Brasil has decided to establish an agroecology institute in collaboration with the (...) Next ...

This article was published in the November 2007 issue of Resonances, a citizens’ information monthly drawn up by young activists. To produce more rice, of a better quality, at a lower cost while respecting the environment. Is it an impossible challenge? Not for Masipag, the farmer-scientist partnership for development who after twenty years of surveys and experiments has come up with an answer for the small Philippine farmers. The partnership involved three types of actors. The farmers (...) Next ...

This article was published in the June 2008 issue of Resonances, a citizens’ information monthly drawn up by young activists. Chavannes founded the Papaye Peasant Movement ( MPP, Mouvement paysan Papaye, MPP) in 1973. Today he is 63 years old, and has not had a day off since then. Son of a farmer, he has chosen to devote his life to working with peasant farmers. Chavannes, what is your background? I come from a peasant family from central Häiti. When I was a child, there was no school in (...) Next ...

This article was published in the June 2008 issue of Resonances, a citizens’ information monthly drawn up by young activists. Haïtian peasants have mobilised to combat massive deforestation on their island. With 50 million trees cut down each year, of which 17 million are used to make charcoal, less than 2% of the island is presently forested, a result of the deforestation which begun in colonial times and which later continued with the aid of unscrupulous foreign businesses. Charcoal (...) Next ...

This article was published in the June 2008 issue of Resonances, a citizens’ information monthly drawn up by young activists. 400 farmers participated in the 4th national meeting of the Bionatur network, from the 22nd to the 24th of last May, in Candiota, in the province of Rio Grande do Sul, at the southern tip of Brazil. A strategic weapon for the Landless Workers Movement (Movimiento de los Trabajadores Rurales sin Tierra, MST) and defender of agro-ecological seeds since 1997, the (...) Next ...

The Mouvement paysan Papaye (MPP, Papaye Peasant Movement) has decided to mobilize in support of the victims of the cyclones and floods that ravaged the country in August and September of 2008. In the central region, the town of Hinche, home of the MPP headquarters, was severely flooded by the Guayamunc river. 3,000 people made homeless by the floods have been sheltered in makeshift centers (three public schools made available for that purpose) and 1,000 others have found refuge with (...) Next ...

The use of ducks in the rice fields is a real revolution for the Filipino peasants. The method, imported from Japan, is simple: the ducks, who scratch at the soil with their beaks, aerate the water and allow for a stronger crop of rice. They live on the parasites in the fields, which are harmful to the young plants, and so are substitutes for pesticides. In addition, their droppings make excellent manure that supports the fertility of the soil. In Leyte, in the Visayas (...) Next ...

"Managing water resources is crucial. The government must draw its conclusions from the inadequate water policies of the past and start acting"; such was the unanimous conclusion of all the participants in the National convention on the Indus delta environmental disaster, organized by the Pakistan Fisher Folk (PFF) on January 19, 2009. The situation of the Indus delta is worrying indeed: the water flow is restricted by the great number of dams upstream and water quality has been (...) Next ...