FARMERS' DIALOGUE - NEWS

 

The East African Farmers’ Dialogue will take place in Uganda at Rest Gardens, Bweyogerere, 12 kms east of Kampala on the Uganda-Kenya Highway, from May 5 -9 2010.

The founding members of the African Farmers’ Dialogue: Julius Khakula, George Kamau and Duncan Nduhiu, Kenya, Martin Simtenda and Juliana K Swai, Tanzania, Jamil Ssebalu, Andrew Mukhwana and Dorothy Tingu, Uganda, Jim Wigan, UK and Claude Bourdin, France were joined by 240 people from East Africa, Sudan and Democratic Republic of the Congo, for the official launch of the Constitution for the African Farmers’ Dialogue. This is phase one of a programme that began four years ago at a Farmers’ Dialogue in Panchgani, India.

250 people gathered for the official launch of Farmers Dialogue – Africa, Thursday 26 November, at the Africana Hotel in Kampala, Uganda. It included representatives of the Farmers Dialogue in Kenya, Tanzania, Congo, Rwanda, Great Britain and France, who gave evidence of the effect of farmers’ exchanges over the last 15 years.

Sixty farmers from Southern Ukraine met from March 5th to 9th in Krynychky, 100 kms from Dnepropetrovsk, to address factors that limit agricultural production in their country.

107 farmers from 13 countries met in Western Kenya for an East African Farmers’ Dialogue, to plan how to take farming beyond subsistence to feeding the continent. Presentations at the Dialogue demonstrated that Africa has the resources, both technical and human, within its borders to feed its people and lift the continent out of poverty.

Genetic engineering, fair trade, pesticides and health, the environment and world hunger: behind our plate of food is a hidden world to think about. From 9–12 October, farmers, consumers and scientists from 11 European countries did just that, meeting in the Italian city of Castel San Pietro, near Bologna.

A talk given by Jim Wigan, Co-ordinator of the international Farmers’ Dialogue, it gives a farmer’s perspective on feeding a world accelerating towards nine billion people. Against a background of rising food and energy prices and serious shortages, he emphasised the part that every individual can play.

Finding the means and the motivation (Africa in Search of Answers from within)

Farmers can make a difference!

This is an opening address given by Phil Jefferys, an Australian Farmer at the November 2007 International Farmers' Dialogue in France.