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FAO's work on Family Farming

Preparing for the Decade of Family Farming (2019–2028) to achieve the SDGs









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    Book (stand-alone)
    United Nations Decade of Family Farming 2019-2028, Regional Action Plan to Implement the UNDFF and Achieve the SDGs in South Asia 2021
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    This book is an output of a regional experts’ consultation meeting on “UN Decade of Family Farming: Formulating Strategies and Action Plan to Strengthen Smallholder Family Farmers in South Asia”, 5-6 November 2020 organized by SAARC Agriculture Center (SAC), Bangladesh in collaboration with Asian Farmers’ Association (AFA), Philippines, and the International Cooperative Alliance Asia and Pacific (ICA-AP), India, and the technical assistance of the Food and Agriculture Organization Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (FAO RAP) Thailand. This book is the concrete result of active engagement and participations of SAARC Member States’ National Focal Point Experts, invited UNDFF experts, authors, and participants. This book focuses on- family farming’s constraints, challenges, opportunities, and government policies to contribute on attaining the targets of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at country and South Asia regional levels.
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    Farms, family farms, farmland distribution and farm labour: What do we know today? 2019
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    A better and more complete understanding of family farms is urgently needed to guide policy makers’ efforts towards achieving a number of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This paper takes stock of the number of farms worldwide, and their distribution and that of farmland, on the basis of agricultural censuses and survey data. Thus, it shows that there are more than 608 million farms in the world. Rough estimates also indicate that more than 90 percent of these farms are family farms (by our definition) occupying around 70–80 percent of farmland and producing about 80 percent of the world’s food in value terms. We underscore the importance of not referring to family farms and small farms (i.e., those of less than 2 hectares) interchangeably: the latter account for 84 percent of all farms worldwide, but operate only around 12 percent of all agricultural land, and produce roughly 36 percent of the world’s food. The largest 1 percent of farms in the world operate more than 70 percent of the world’s farmland. The stark differences between family farms, in terms of size, their share in farmland distribution, and their patterns across income groups and regions, make clear the importance of properly defining different types of farms and distinguishing their differences when engaging in policy discourse and decision making towards the SDGs. The paper also considers evidence on labour and age provided by the censuses. There is a need to improve agricultural censuses if we want to deepen our understanding of farms.
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    Book (stand-alone)
    United Nations Decade of Family Farming 2019-2028 - Global Action Plan 2019
    Agriculture today faces increasing pressure to provide sufficient, affordable and nutritious food for a growing population, cope with climate change and the degradation of natural resources, including water scarcity, soil depletion, and biodiversity loss. Pervasive inequalities between rural and urban areas have led to an unprecedented level of urbanization. To feed the world and do it sustainably, an urgent and radical shift in our food systems is necessary. To be effective, transformative actions must address a complex set of interconnected objectives encompassing economic, social and environmental dimensions. Family farmers are at the heart of this issue. They provide the majority of the world’s food, are the major investors in agriculture and the backbone of the rural economic structure. The Global Action Plan of the UNDFF provides detailed guidance for the international community on collective, coherent and comprehensive actions that can be taken to support family farmers. It outlines a comprehensive approach to support efforts to achieve the SDGs, in the context of the progressive realization of the Right to Adequate Food. Designed around seven mutually reinforcing pillars of work, the Global Action Plan recommends a series of interconnected actions from the local to the global level. Any interventions developed during the decade must always consider the diversity of family farmers. They should be context-specific, adapted to regional, national, local socio-cultural and socio-economic conditions. To guarantee the success of the UNDFF, all actions should place family farmers at the center and be implemented through bottom-up, participatory and inclusive processes.

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