Responding to the rise of free trade in the global economy, the Southeast Asian Council for Food Security (SEACON) set out in 2003 to conduct a unique, participatory research project to investigate the impacts of these macroeconomic changes on small scale food producers in Southeast Asia.

In this notebook Ulrich Mueller describes a strategy of the FoodFirst Information and Action Network to influence large mining operations that were causing various human rights abuses, by putting pressure on banks and other financial institutions that invest in those mines.