Ranong is the second largest Burmese community in Thailand, where many migrants work in the fishing and its related industries. However, the community has been hit by an economic downturn in part caused by the loss of fishing concessions from Burma.

Documentary by the Land Core Group Myanmar, where 70% of the Myanmar population are smallholder farmers, about the challenges faced by poor farmers from land grabbing and land dispossession in rural Myanmar...Interviews with land activists and dispossessed farmers in different parts of the country... sections on: resistance to land-grabbing; Myanmar land law and policies (where customary tenure and women's land rights are not explicitly recognised); efficiency of smallholder practice...

...This study will examine the food (rice) availability at the national level using the official and FAO data. Second, a case study in the rice deficit region (Dry Zone) will present the characteristics and food security status of the farm and non-farm rural households (landless) and the determinants of food security. The Dry Zone was chosen to study because the EC & FAO (2007) classified this region as the most vulnerable area of the country. Furthermore, the FAO projected that the Net Primary Production would be decreased significantly in the Dry Zone in the next two decades.

Commission on Human Rights
59th Session

Item 10: Economic, social and cultural rights

"...

It is in the remote parts of Myanmar that the worst abuses of the right to food continue. Within recent weeks, the Asian Legal Resource Centre has spoken with persons travelling in some of these areas. They have told of thousands of people displaced from their lands, some for years, starving in the jungle. One who carried an emaciated child to a Thai town just across the border spoke of the utter shock and disbelief among medical staff at the child?s condition...

... Large-scale agricultural investments – in plantations, processing plants or contract farming schemes, for example – have increased in recent years, particularly in developing countries. Investment in the agriculture sector can bring much needed support for rural development, but communities have also witnessed significant negative impacts. Some of the most serious involve local landholders being displaced from their lands and losing access to

Introduction: "The goal of poverty alleviation is now seen as a high priority project for
Myanmar’s new
government.
In
public statements the new President, Thein Sein, has raised issues of
poverty in
Myanmar
as a problem
facing
the country (as opposed to a previous failure to
acknowledge any such problems.)
Support for this goal
was verbally
reiterated
in a
May
2011
Poverty Alleviation Seminar headed by Dr. U Myint, and again, more broadly, at an

SELECTION OF INFORMATIONAL MATERIAL ON CONTRACT FARMING: Contract farming in general...Contract farming in Asian countries...CAMBODIA...PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA...REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA...JAPAN...LAO
PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC...MALAYSIA...REPUBLIC OF THE UNION OF MYANMAR...REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES...KINGDOM OF THAILAND...SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM

Roads, Relocations, and the Campaign for Control in Toungoo District. Based on interviews and field reports from KHRG field researchers in this northern Karen district, looks at the phenomenon of 'Peace Villages' under SPDC control and 'Hiding Villages' in the hills; while the 'Hiding Villages' are being systematically destroyed and their villagers hunted and captured, the 'Peace Villages' face so many demands for forced labour and extortion that many ofthem are fleeing to the hills.

This report describes the current situation faced by rural Karen villagers in Toungoo District (known as Taw Oo in Karen). Toungoo District is the northernmost district of Karen State, sharing borders with Karenni (Kayah) State to the east, Pegu (Bago) Division to the west, and Shan State to the north. To the south Toungoo District shares borders with the Karen districts of Nyaunglebin (Kler Lweh Htoo) and Papun (Mutraw).

Looks at CAADP plans in Nigeria, Malawi, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana, Zambia. Found systematic policy neglect of women farmers. Plans pay little attention to their needs and rights. Money for implementation is woefully inadequate.

Contains framework for analysing the gender impacts of foreign investment in agriculture; gender analysis of the certification criteria of voluntary sustainability standards and responsible investment frameworks; do voluntary sustainability standards improve gender equality?; lessons for responsible investment frameworks and recommendations.

Analyses the World Bank’s Policy Research Report (PRR) from a gender perspective and is critical of the consultation process on it thus far. It has important implications for women in Africa. The Bank believes land should be viewed not as a source of subsistence but of capital. It ignores women’s unpaid labour as a factor in agricultural productivity. It treats the household as an undifferentiated unit and ignores that the family often functions as a site of oppression. The Bank stresses ‘motivated’ family labour but ignores that much of women’s labour is far from voluntary.