DISCUSSION ON FAMILY FARMING CRITERIA FOR

DEFINITIONS AND TYPOLOGIES

ALVARO RAMOS, GLOBAL DIALOGUE 2014

CONTENTS

OBJECTIVE OF THIS PRESENTATION

The main object of the following presentation is to share with the audicence the progress made during this process, that is under construction, that will try to: (a) understand and (b) pay attention over the critical aspects presented by experts, family networks and representatives from governments and UN agencies during the Global Dialogue.

OBJECTIVES SOUGHT WHEN DEFINING AND CHARACTERIZING

FAMILY FARMING

Recognizing the urgency of addressing the question of Family Farming definitions and typologies at national and regional level and its crucial importance for outputs of the IYFF beyond 2014, FAO is hosting a technical Working Group, which will extensively build on consistent work achieved throughout the IYFF and ongoing extensive work achieved by the World Agricultures Watch initiative on typologies of agricultural holdings as well as other initiatives.

OBJECTIVES SOUGHT WHEN DEFINING AND CHARACTERIZING

FAMILY FARMING

The main goal of the Working Group is to develop criteria and guidelines to support countries for establishing and characterizing clear Family Farming definitions and typologies at national and regional level.

The criteria are expected to be encompassing enough to provide a range of characteristics that are applicable to multiple family farming contexts – shaped by historical, cultural and economic factors, user oriented and practical enough to be informed through regular data collection, including existing statistics.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE WORKING GROUP AND ITS

MANDATES

Mandate: “Compilation of definitions and criteria to attain a better quality in the design and implementation of specific Family Farming-tailored public policies, and their instruments of intervention, so that despite (or better still, considering) the heterogeneity the policies, programs and/or projects of technical and financial cooperation of the international agencies, may maximize their efficiency and outputs as a result of a greater and better coordination and complementation in the resources assigned and the public goods and services produced.”

MEMBERS OF THE WORKING GROUP

MATERIALS AND METHODS

VALIDITY OF THE EFFORTS IN FINDING THESE DEFINITIONS

The Family Farming tailored public policies - Focusing (targeting) designing instruments better, more appropriately, to implement the resources better, obtaining: enhanced results: change in the situations of

subordination and poverty; adoption of good agricultural practices and organization of work; adoption of appropriate technologies to increase productivity, improve food security, income and quality of life, etc.;

greater impact: by unit of resource invested, through a better coverage of the population that benefits from public policies and faster results. Moderate the risk of diverting resources toward other sectors of the population that are not beneficiaries.

VALIDITY OF THE EFFORTS IN FINDING THESE DEFINITIONS

What happens quite frequently is that: (a) very often the instruments exist but:

prevent the beneficiary population from visualizing or identifying them, so the resources are underutilized, the situation remains unchanged and the frustration of the stakeholders worsens;

(b) the instruments are designed in such a way (general or non-

specific) that they and their resources end up being used and adopted by a type of farmer or population other than those initially designed for.

The instruments and resources are used by farmers with more developed skills and with easy access to them. Very often, when there is an under-utilization of the resources, the technical agents themselves orient them to the most capable farmers, which, in itself, leads to the reproduction of the subordination situations that they intended to change.

VISIBILITY FOR PUBLIC POLICIES Availability of more and better Family

Farming-tailored public policies, with better designs and better applied instruments and more resources with greater impact.

It also requires finding concrete parameters that may be assigned values, new values that obviously reflect and respect the context conditions, including:

VISIBILITY FOR PUBLIC POLICIES

Although the productive and economical approach is necessary, it is clearly not enough. Historically, the censuses (which have been basically the instruments for “data collection” at a farming level) have always had an economic, productive and technological orientation, and to a lesser extent, a social dimension.

That makes it possible to get a very faithful characterization of the singularities of the farming sector, its progresses, current status, and behavior of various sub sectors and by items of production, so as to provide valid and reliable statistical information for the design of item- or sub – sector, or even sectorial-oriented policies.

“VICIOUS CIRCLE” THAT PREVENTS THE STATISTICAL VISIBILITY OF FF, TO ALLOW FOR

BETTER DECISIONS

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FAMILY FARMING DIFFERENTIAL PUBLIC POLICIES AND OTHER AREAS OF THE POLICIES DIRECTLY RELATED

FAMILY FARMING AS A SOCIOECONOMIC AND/OR ACCUMULATION CATEGORY - A MATTER OF

APPROACH

FAO’s definition of Family Farming:

“A family farm is an agricultural holding which is managed and operated by a household, and where farm labor is largely supplied by the household”

  Where: 

“The household is the family unit to which the holder belongs and in which the householder’s members share the same living accommodation, pool some or all of their income and wealth and consume certain types of goods and services collectively, mainly housing and food”

It´s be very difficult to reach a single, comprehensive and unchangeable definition of Family Farming that may encompass all the following aspects and their heterogeneity:

(i) the agro - ecological context and the proximity with different markets and communities;

(ii) the results of historical, political and cultural process; (iii)the results of the Science and Technology Revolution;(iv)migratory movements; (v) the consequences of the mobilizations and social

claims and gender equality; (vi)the political conditions and citizenship of the rural

population; (vii)market governance, mainly that of food, and its

impact on F&NS policies and strategies; (viii)the effects of climate change, all of which causes

significant transformations in the activity of millions of family farmers.

FURTHER THE QUESTIONNAIRES RECEIVED, THE BIBLIOGRAPHY REVIEW AND THE E-CONSULTATIONS WE CAN CONCLUDE THAT ARE FOUR COMMON CRITERIA AND PARAMETERS TO THE FAMILY FARMING IN THE WORLD:

The Family Farming Concept is a multidimensional construction. The key

criteria are:

The papers reviewed indicate that in the various regions around the planet, there is an agreement at least at the “academic” and social representation levels, of speaking of Family Farming as an “umbrella concept”, under which there are already various sub – categories that permit to adjust the definition and relate it with their respective contexts, without making them lose consistency with the broader definition.

Those sub-categories include the common criteria and parameters that will allow the statistical visibility of the family farmers, their geographically location and the correct design of the public policies.

“The concept of Family Farming is under constant change, hand in hand with the different periods of development and the different social forces”.

Prof. Ye Jingzhong, China