80% of the food we eat is the product of the work of family farmers.
- Farmers
- Small-scale fishermen
- Pastoralists
- Foresters
- Mountain farmers
- Indigenous peoples…
They produce our food while caring for the planet. To keep feeding the world, they need access to
Infrastructure
Innovation
Markets
Information
Appropriate policies and investments
The International Year of Fruits and Vegetables (2021), which we already talked about in our blog, will be celebrated during the United Nations Decade of Family Farming (2019-2028).
These two celebrations reinforce each other and provide greater visibility to small-scale producers.
The United Nations Decade of Family Farming (2019-2028).
Aims to bring a new perspective on what it means to be a family farmer in a rapidly changing world and highlights, as never before, the important role family farmers play in eradicating hunger and building our food future.
Family farming offers a unique opportunity to ensure food security, improve livelihoods, better manage natural resources, protect the environment and achieve sustainable development, especially in rural areas.
Thanks to their wisdom and care for the land, family farmers are the agents of change we need to achieve Zero Hunger, a more balanced and resilient planet, and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
Key Messages
Decade of Family Farming Vision Statement:
A world in which diverse, healthy and sustainable food and farming systems thrive, where resilient rural and urban communities enjoy a high quality of life with dignity and equity and free from hunger and poverty.
Family farming is essential to realizing this vision.
Through sound policies, programs and regulations that take into account the needs of present and future generations, the independence, inclusion and economic capacity of family farmers must be protected and expanded. They must also reposition the diversity of family farmers as a sustainable development priority, thus contributing to the 2030 Agenda.
We must start this process now.
Plan of Action
The UN Decade of Family Farming Global Plan of Action 2019-202812 aims to accelerate action taken collectively, coherently and comprehensively to support family farmers, who are key agents of sustainable development.
It can be downloaded in full by CLICKING HERE and provides detailed guidelines for the international community on collective, coherent and comprehensive actions that can be taken to support family farmers.
Designed on the basis of seven mutually complementary pillars, the Global Plan of Action recommends a series of interrelated actions from local to global levels.
The 7 pillars
Pillar 1: Creating an enabling policy environment to strengthen family farming
Develop and strengthen family farming-friendly policies, investments and institutional frameworks at local, national and international levels based on inclusive and effective governance and timely and geographically relevant data.
Ensure sustained political commitment and adequate resources from public and private actors. Create and strengthen international, national and local cooperation and partnerships to promote the rights and multifunctional role of family farming.
Pillar 2: Supporting young people and ensuring the generational sustainability of family farming. To ensure the generational sustainability of family farming by facilitating the access of young people to land, other natural resources, information, education, infrastructure and financial services, markets and policy-making processes related to agriculture.
Pillar 3: Promote gender equity in family agriculture and the leadership role of rural women. Promote gender equity by strengthening women’s organizations, promoting self-empowerment, their own training process and women’s autonomy and independence, to increase access to and control of productive and financial resources, especially land, as well as access to information.
Pillar 4. Strengthen family farmers’ organizations and their capacity to generate knowledge, represent their members and provide inclusive services in the urban-rural continuum.
Pillar 5. Improve the socioeconomic inclusion, resilience and well-being of family farmers and rural households and communities.
family farmers and rural households and communities.
While family farming is the foundation of food security and healthy and sustainable food systems, family farmers are the most affected by poverty and vulnerability, and face the highest levels of economic, financial, social and environmental risks.
Pillar 6. Promote the sustainability of family farming for climate change resilient food systems.
Pillar 7. Strengthen the multidimensionality of family farming to achieve social innovations that contribute to territorial development and food systems that safeguard biodiversity, the environment and culture.
How to join us?
If you are a family farmer, a producer organization, a government entity, an NGO, a company, like us, join the United Nations Decade of Family Farming 2019-2028.
You can do it in the following way:
Share the message
Inform, educate and engage your audience on the topic of family farming. Join the conversation online using the hashtag #FamilyFarming and share related stories and activities – ask your partners and people in your network to do the same! Engage the media by featuring stories about family farmers.
Place the UNDFF emblem on communication materials.
Use the emblem on non-commercial communication materials (brochures, flyers, posters, maps, stickers, etc.) Remember that you cannot modify the UNDFF emblem. You can find guidelines for using the emblem and visual identity here .
Working with community media and engaging farmer organizations
Community media provides a unique platform for family farmers and their organizations to make their voices heard and keep them informed on issues that are important to them. Work with community media and local producer organization communication focal points to provide a space for family farmers to tell their stories and share their views.
Programs that celebrate the diversity of family farming and highlight its contributions to food security and sustainable development will help raise awareness of the key role family farmers play both in their local contexts and globally.
Submit your family farming stories
We want to help tell your story.
Stories that showcase the contributions of family farmers and/or highlight the challenges they face.
These can come from the farmers themselves, but also from the people or institutions that work with them, so if you are a member of the Bandex family, count on us to tell your story.
You can use the template provided here as a basis for the stories.
Send your story with photos to undff@fao.org to be featured on the UNDFF website.
Every day, family farmers around the world work hard to produce our food, and often lack the outreach, infrastructure, information and support from all of us.
Why don’t we start doing it. TODAY.
