Newly Empowered Black Farmers Ruined by South Africa’s Drought

Almost half a decade of drought across most of South Africa has led to small towns in crisis and food imports for the first time in over 20 years, as well as severely hampering the government’s planned land redistribution programme.

Four Fast Facts to Debunk Myths About Rural Women

We are lucky to live in a country that has long since abandoned the image of the damsel in distress. Even Disney princesses now save themselves and send unsuitable “saviours” packing. But despite the great strides being made in gender equality, we are still failing rural women, particularly women farmers.

Rousseff’s Brazil – No Country for the Landless

In Brazil, one of the countries with the highest concentration of land ownership in the world, some 200,000 peasant farmers still have no plot of their own to farm – a problem that the first administration of President Dilma Rousseff did little to resolve.

Good Harvest Fails to Dent Rising Hunger in Zimbabwe

With agriculture as one of the drivers of economic growth, Zimbabwe needs to invest in the livelihoods of smallholder farmers who keep the country fed, experts say.

Vanuatu Puts Indigenous Rights First in Land Reform

Stemming widespread corruption in the leasing of customary land to investors is the aim of bold land reform, introduced this year in the Southwest Pacific Island state of Vanuatu, which puts the rights of traditional landowners above the discretionary powers of politicians.

Mugabe’s Policies Starve Zimbabweans

Tambudzai Javangwe from Mwenezi district in southern Zimbabwe, has run out of food and each day she begs for hand-outs from well-wishers so that she can feed herself an her six orphaned grandchildren.

Colombia, the United States, and Montesquieu

The United States and Colombia are the leaders in mental anxiety in the Americas. Both have good reasons: Colombia has witnessed the longest lasting violence in any contemporary country: from 1949, with some interruptions, then on again from 1964 with the notorious guerilla group, the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).

Zimbabwean Farmers Adrift Amid Power Struggles

For the past five years, farmer Melusi Mhlanga has spent nearly 200 dollars each season for inputs, but the maize yields have not matched his investment. 

Key Land Reform Accord in Colombia’s Peace Talks

Colombian government and guerrilla delegates have announced an agreement on the question of land reform – an important step in the peace talks that began six months ago in Havana.

Imminent Outbreak of Violence on Brazilian Amazon Estate

A fresh outbreak of violence between large landowners and landless peasants is looming in the Amazonian state of Pará, in northern Brazil.

Land, But No Paradise, for Brazil Massacre Survivors

The order came from the office of the governor of the northern Brazilian state of Pará, Almir Gabriel, at 5:00 PM on Apr. 17, 1996: clear route PA-150, the epicentre of social protests for land reform, at any cost.

The Brazilian State of Pará, Where Land is Power

Toiling beneath a blazing sun in the humid heat of the Amazon, Waldemar dos Santos, 60, tends the community garden he shares with other landless peasant farmers in the Brazilian state of Pará, as they wait for agrarian reform to provide them with the opportunity for a better life.

Murder of Landless Workers’ Leader Recalls Brazil’s Dictatorship

The execution-style killing of a leader of the Landless Workers' Movement in a sugarcane plantation in the southeastern Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro, where bodies of opponents of the dictatorship were incinerated in the 1970s, recalls one of the most tragic chapters in this country's history.

Colombian Landowners, Peasants Listen to Each Other

Colombia's large-scale agricultural producers and peasant farmers managed to listen to each other for the first time about the core cause of the decades-long armed conflict: the concentration of rural land ownership and the social and economic development of the countryside.

Big Landowners Block Rural Development Law in Guatemala

An “integral rural development law” to promote access to land, employment and other rights for small farmers is bogged down in the Guatemalan Congress due to opposition from large landowners, who see it as an attempt at land reform.