Porto Alegre, Brazil will be the site of the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD) from 7 to 10 March 2006.

Hosted by Brazil and organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Conference will consider “New Challenges and options for revitalizing rural communities”.

Five main themes will be the topics of discussion:

• Policies and practices for securing and improving access to land by the poor and promoting agrarian reform to alleviate poverty and hunger.

• Building capacity to improve access to land, water, agricultural inputs and agrarian services to promote sustainable natural resources management and rural development.

• New opportunities to strengthen rural producers and communities facilitating people’s choices in rural development.

• Agrarian reform, social justice and sustainable development.

• Food sovereignity and access to resources.

For each theme, an issues paper will be prepared and discussed through a consultation process including an email conference. The issue papers will be presented at ICARRD.