Family farming offers answers to increasing food production

Youth, just like women, are vital target groups in the promotion of family farming. Photo BY FRED MUZAALE

Every era has its challenges. And each challenge demands specific responses. In the 1960s, famine threatened South Asia. New high yielding wheat and rice varieties responding well to high levels of fertiliser application and ample water availability significantly boosted food production.
Today, we are not facing famine--but we are at a crossroads. Around 842 million people remain chronically hungry because they cannot afford to eat adequately, despite the fact that the world is no longer short of food.

Challenges
We have the additional challenge of feeding a population that is eating more – and sometimes better, healthier diets – and which is expected to surpass the nine billion mark.
At the same time farmers – and humanity as a whole – are already facing the new challenges posed by climate change.
And the degradation of land and water resources, as well as other negative environmental impacts, is showing us the limits of highly intensive farming systems.
We need a way forward that has the same novelty of the Green Revolution but which responds to today’s needs: we cannot use the same tool to respond to a different challenge.
And so the quest is now on for truly sustainable farming systems that can meet the world’s future food needs. And nothing comes closer to the sustainable food production paradigm than family farming.

Sustainable practices
It is fitting, therefore, that the United Nations has named 2014 the International Year of Family Farming.
It provides an occasion to highlight the role that family farmers play in eradicating hunger and conserving natural resources, central elements of the sustainable future we want.

Support to family farming need not and should not be done in opposition to large-scale, specialised farming, which also plays an important role to ensure global food supply and which faces its own challenges, including the adoption of sustainable approaches.

Using innovative techniques such as building terraces and adopting zero-tillage practices, family farmers have consistently succeeded in maintaining production on often marginal lands.

Role
The preservation and sustainable use of natural resources is rooted in the productive logic of family farms and sets them apart from large-scale specialised farming.

The highly diversified nature of their agricultural activities gives them a central role in promoting environmental sustainability, safeguarding biodiversity, and contributes to healthier and more balanced diets.
Family farmers also play a pivotal role in the local production, marketing and consumption circuits that are so important not simply in fighting hunger but also in creating jobs, generating income, and in stimulating and diversifying local economies.

In developed and developing countries alike, they are the main producers of food consumed locally, the primary stewards of food security.
Experiences in many countries show that family farmers respond well with increased production if the appropriate policy environment is effectively put in place.

Yet at the same time, over 70 percent of the world’s food insecure population lives in rural areas in developing countries.
Many of them are subsistence producers who may not grow enough to meet their families’ needs.

Attention and support
Typically they have access only to limited and often degraded natural resources and are particularly vulnerable to external shocks, including those induced by climate change.

Too frequently in the past, family farmers were considered a problem to be solved, the target of social policies with only limited potential.
That is the mindset we need to change. Family farmers are not part of the problem; on the contrary, they are part of the solution for food security and sustainable development.

But there is a limit to what family farmers can achieve on their own.
Governments, international organisations, regional agencies, civil society organisations, the private sector and research institutions have a role to play in providing this support and creating the enabling environment they need to thrive.

The 2014 International Year of Family Farming gives us a chance to revitalise this critical sector.
By choosing to celebrate family farmers, we recognise that they must be protagonists in responding to the dual challenge the world today faces: improving food security while preserving crucial natural resources.
This is the test of our era. Giving family farmers the attention and support they deserve, we can rise to meet it.