The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is a mega-regional trade deal being negotiated among 16 countries across Asia-Pacific. If adopted, RCEP will cover half the world’s population, including 420 million small family farms that produce 80% of the region’s food. RCEP is expected to create powerful new rights and lucrative business opportunities for food and agriculture corporations under the guise of boosting trade and investment. Several RCEP countries are also part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), another mega-regional agreement setting some of the most pro-big business terms seen in trade and investment deals so far. While the fate of the TPP is uncertain, these two agreements may have to co-exist and there is pressure to align them on numerous points. What will this mean for food and farmers in the region?

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A new joint report from Community Network in Action (CNA), Ponlok Khmer, GRAIN, Cambodia Indigenous Youth Association (CIYA), and the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP) exposes the devastating consequences of land grabs for indigenous communities in Preah Vihear province, northern Cambodia. 

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The struggle to resolve conflicts around land deals continues. Yesterday it was at Socfin’s general assembly in Luxembourg, and today it was at Bolloré’s in Paris.

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Concerns about food safety and hygiene have underpinned some governments’ decision to ban street vendors and close down fresh markets in recent years. Bangkok’s street vendors are the latest victims of this ban as the city government announced it will clean out all street vendors by the end of 2017.

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The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) has just published its annual report, which confirms that the Southern Cone of Latin America is the region of the world producing the largest quantity of GMOs and having the largest land area under a single monoculture (over 54 million hectares of GM soy in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and southern Bolivia).

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We cannot address climate change without reducing the production and consumption of industrial meat and dairy. Learn more in this fact sheet drawn up by GRAIN and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

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Asia’s rapid economic growth and industrialisation are coming at an extremely high price for local communities, their environments and economies. Across the region, ‘development’ is characterized by large-scale investment, at the heart of which are the control and exploitation of land, forests, water, nature, minerals and labour. An article by GRAIN and Focus on the Global South in the latest issue of the World Rainforest Movement Bulletin.

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The world faced many steep challenges in 2016. Corporations continued their assault on local food systems, farmer-controlled seeds, peasant lands and indigenous territories. And the communities and activists defending their lands and livelihoods continued to do so at great risk to their safety—often facing brutal and even deadly repression. But people’s movements are not backing down. In close collaboration with partners in the regions and at the international level, GRAIN worked to support these efforts through research and information work, outreach, alliance-strengthening and capacity-building. This activity report shares some of the year’s highlights and the challenges ahead.

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The latest edition of the Nyeleni newsletter is about so called free trade agreements and agriculture. GRAIN and bilaterals.org helped to pull this issue together. It analyses a number of prominent trade deals and the public resistance against them, and highlights testimonies from different struggles around the world.

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