Articles by Peter Rosset

Gateses' Approach to African Hunger is Bound to Fail
Peter Rosset, LRAN
December 18, 2006 - The teaming up of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with the Rockefeller Foundation to bring a "new" Green Revolution to Africa sadly ignores the lessons of the failures of the first Green Revolution.

Transgenic Crops to Address Third World Hunger? A Critical Analysis
Peter Rosset, Center for the Study of Change
August 09, 2005 - Industry and mainstream research and policy institutions often suggest that transgenic crop varieties can raise the productivity of poor third world farmers, feed the hungry, and reduce poverty. These claims are crtically evaluated by examining global-hunger data, the constraints that affect the productivity of small farmers in the third world, and the factors that explain their poverty. Read More. . Download the Full Article

For a world without hunger: Agrarian reform now! Report on the World Forum on Agrarian Reform
Peter Rosset, Center for the Study of Change in the Mexican Countryside (CECCAM ) &
December 17, 2004 - The World Forum on Agrarian Reform www..fmra.org, was held from December 5-8, 2004, in Valencia, Spain. More than 500 delegates came together from 68 countries in five continents, including 13 European countries, 20 countries in Africa, 18 in Latin America, 2 in North America, 16 in Asia, and 1 in Oceania. The productivity and success of the conference "exceeded all expectations in terms of participation by grassroots social movements" and has helped to provide a clear direction for ongoing work in the struggle for "land reform from below".Read More. . .

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: The Land Policies of the World Bank
Peter Rosset
November 22, 2004 - This December representatives from peasant movements around the world will gather together with each other and with specialists in land reform policies, at the World Forum on Agrarian Reform, to be held in Valencia, Spain. On the top of their agenda will be debunking the hype emanating from the World Bank on the topic of land reform, and organizing a global campaign to fight the pernicious impacts of the Bank's land policies.

Tides Shift on Agrarian Reform: New Movements Show the Way
Peter Rosset, Co-Director, Food First
April 15, 2004 - Peasant organizations around the world have been pushing for land reform on their terms in new ways. In early 2000 the landless members of the Honduran Peasant Movement of Aguán decided to take matters into their own hands. Some 900 families occupied a 5000 hectare site of state owned land in Colón. The land was the former base of the Regional Center for Military Training (CREM) during the 1980's where the U.S. trained the contra forces against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

Genetic Engineering Of Food Crops For The Third World-A Report in Two Parts
Peter Rosset, Co-Director
March 18, 2004 - When we speak of national markets, we find that small and peasant farmers, despite their disadvantaged position in society, are the primary producers of staple foods, accounting for very high percentages of national production in most third world countries. Their agriculture is complex, diverse and risk prone. This is because they have historically been displaced into marginal zones characterized by broken terrain, slopes, irregular rainfall, little irrigation, and/or low soil fertility; and because they are poor and are victimized by pervasive anti-poor and anti-small farmer biases in national and global economic policies. It is not a lack of technology which holds such farmers back, but rather pervasive injustices and inequities in access to resources, including land, credit, market access, etc., and other anti-poor policy biases.

Genetic Engineering Of Food Crops For The Third World:-A Report in Two Parts
Peter Rosset, Co-Director
March 18, 2004 - Part II of this report continues with a full bibliography.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: World Bank Land Policies
Peter Rosset, Co-Director, Food First
February 17, 2004 - Peter Rosset provides an overview of the World Bank's approach to land reform in this paper presented at the Seminar on “The Negative Impacts of the World Bank’s Policies on Market-Based Land Reform.” George Washington University, Washington, DC, April 15 -17, 2002. Rosset provides a compelling argument for why the World Bank's "one market, one world" policies result in unitended consequences for landless people around the world. A model for understanding the systematic efforts of the World Bank to move nations towards markets and privatization is provided.

Access To Land: Land Reform and Security of Tenure
Peter Rosset, Co-Director
February 17, 2004 - Access to land and security of tenure are critical elements in alleviating rural poverty and moving toward a world where food security and the absence of hunger are a reality for all. At the 1996 World Food Summit in Rome, the governments of the world agreed upon a declaration to reduce hunger by one half in the year 2015. This paper reviews the original commitments made in 1996, and the overall lack of progress by governments in meeting them.