recommendations family farming

8/3/2019 Recommendations Family Farming

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RECOMMENDATIONS for improving the FF collected from the referencedocuments for the World Conference on Family Farming "Feeding the World,Caring for the Earth", enriched by the contributions of participants in the

Working Groups. October 2011

FARMERS’ ORGANIZATIONS

DEMANDS TO THE GOVERNMENTS

• Legal and true recognition of men and women farmers’ organisationsthrough law, programmes and effective freedom of association andcommunication as privileged intermediaries of the pubic powers so thatagricultural and rural policies defend Food Security and Food Sovereigntyin every country. Encourage such recognition through the establishment of

a favourable regulatory, legal and tax framework.

• In this perspective, adaptation and regulation of mechanisms of on-goinginstitutionalized dialogue between the political powers and independentorganisations of farmers inspired by the diversity of existing models in theframework of effective decentralization. Thereby, increasing their capacityto lobby at the level of local, national and global authorities.

• Recognition of the associative rural plurality, renouncing the creation orimposition of organisations related to political power.

• Promotion of applied public agricultural research at the service of national

and local family farming, of its biodiversity and its genetic heritage, in closecooperation with the farmers’ associations in the country, rural NGOs, etc.Support public research on and dissemination/monitoring of the adoptionof technologies adapted to the needs of Family Farmers.

• Provide agricultural organisations with public services in training, technicaland financial sectors etc., in accordance with the needs expressed bythem and respecting their autonomy.

• Facilitate access to information technology by farmers’ organizations.

• Provide social protection to farmers. Organizations should not assume theresponsibilities of the state but collaborate in order to meet existing needs.

• Include specific and participatory budgets for the promotion of rural andagricultural organizations, their participation, training, exchanges etc.

FOR INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS, DONORS ETC.

• Effective recognition of different men and women farmers organizations, inall their diversity, as an essential part of their intermediation in agriculturaland rural matters in each country and, as the case may be, at a regional orinternational level.



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• Promote and support the convergence and consensus among differentsensitivity peasant organizations - such as the Farmers Forum under theauspices of IFAD - on particularly relevant themes such as the land

grabbing, the protection and support to all forms of agriculture, especiallythose in developing countries, the fair regulation of markets and foodprices, the promotion of gender equality in law, etc. and all this in thesearch for progress and fair and efficient solutions.

• Develop programs in order to strengthen local organizations at nationaland international levels. Support their net-working.

• Include special budget for all the points mentioned above.

FOR FARMERS’ AND PRODUCERS’ ORGANISATIONS

• Re-define their internal structures in terms of criteria of equity, participation,democracy, justice and sustainability. Promote women, youth, landlessfarmers, shepherds, artisanal fishermen and indigenous peoples will be animportant issue. Generate, if possible, one common vision of the future ofrural areas.

• Assume an effective leadership and develop capacities of farmers foradvocacy at local, national and global level in order to improve the actualconditions of the farmers.

• Apply criteria of financial, technical and political transparency within the

organizations, enhance national and international coordination betweenthem and provide spaces and resources for networking, demand and takeadvantage of opportunities of influencing through participatory budgeting,consultations policies etc.

• Opt for a greater financial autonomy and capacity of income generation.

• Increase the organizations’ capacities of negotiation (political andcommercial).

• Create international networks of national agricultural organizations,seeking the greatest possible unity between them. To this end it is

essential to improve internal and external communication so that womenand men farmers can increase their knowledge and participation in theorganizations at all levels. Training in terms of net-working is necessary,especially for women and excluded groups.

• Improve the professional training of women and young persons in thefarmers’ organizations.

• Assume a greater awareness and preparedness for environmental crisis,changes in the climatic system etc. For this, partnership-building isessential.

• Agricultural associations are and will be the great protagonists in the future

of Family Farming, of its sustainability and socio-economic consolidation.



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The farmers’ organizations would like to increment their social power andincrease their self-esteem as an entity.



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YOUNG FARMERS


• Defining rural youth as priority group in national and international socio-economic development policies.

• Establish a differentiated state budget, giving priorities to young farmers’access to land, access to credit and sustainable land management.

• Promotion of policies in order to develop rural areas and slow down and/orreduce the process of forced migration from the country to the city andrural depopulation; favouring the integration of rural youth, youngindigenous people, young fishers, etc. into the broad concept of FamilyFarming and providing income levels that allow a decent life in thecountryside, the sea, jungle or mountain. Generate rural employment not

restricted to agriculture and provide rural areas with physical infrastructureand services in order to increase the standard of living. Promote localmarkets.

• Improving the quality of life for young people in aspects related toparticipating in the economy, emancipation of rights, education regardingvalues, gender equality, health, recreation, free time and leisure throughprogrammes and special budgets.

• Encourage access to natural resources for young men and women,particularly in response to the use and distribution of "land", recognizing itssocial role and its close relation to Food Security and Sovereignty andterritory through a legal framework and national policy.

• Combine facilities in order to facilitate the installation of young farmers inthe rural areas, giving better prospects for elderly farmers to retire.

• Stimulating the organisation of new associative and cooperativecompanies to strengthen management capability of rural youth.

• Providing financial support, in the initial stages, for production and serviceprojects for young people with technical and feasible planning, focussedon the market, facilitating innovations and supporting entrepreneurialabilities of young people.

• Improving human capital through formal and informal educational offer inthe field adapted to the rural environment and (potential) work available,with a programme of grants and scholarships that equals out the accessconditions for the different levels of training. Incorporate local andtraditional knowledge into the school’s and training curricula and generatecapacities to innovate in its framework.

• Include the sustainable management of natural resources and indigenousvarieties, based on a systemic approach based on the territory. Providefinancial support and training in sustainable practices. Provideenvironmental education practice, especially in terms of improved watermanagement, renewable energy generation, protection of biodiversity, soilfertility etc.



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FOR FARMERS’ ORGANIZATIONS

• Increasing the institutional aspect and opportunities to participate in therural sector for young people and the intergenerational connection;favouring their auto-organisation and auto-representation and their fullinclusion into mixed organizations. Open up decision-making spaces andsupport young and women leaders.

• Promoting sustainable production systems caring for the environmentthrough training programs, innovation and intergenerational learning.

• Promote research related to traditional knowledge and uses, monitor themand advise on their use.

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Building up a range of experiences and social, economic, educational andenvironmental indicators, specific for rural young people. Drawing up thisrange of empirical data tackles two important topics. On the one hand, thecurrent lack of real and statistical information on young farmers will beresolved and, on the other hand, this information will help to identify themotives and/or reasons that push many young people to leave the ruralworld even when it offers sustainable development opportunities.

• Facilitate exchange between young farmers.

• Empower the marketing capacity of young people, train in the generationof added value.

• Guaranteeing access for young rural women to the services generated bythe rural development policies- access to employment, access toresources, education, salaries - in order to reduce the so-called gendergap.

• Increase their level of information through the use of ICT.



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WOMEN FARMERS


END GENDER DISCRIMINATION

• Incorporate gender in key aspects of policymaking: design, implementation,monitoring and evaluation, allocating the necessary budgetary resourcesand in consultation with women's associations (gender budgets).

• Eliminate gender discrimination in the national legislation -especiallyregarding land and livestock (co)tenure, access to resources, credits andmarkets, contractual rights -, taking into account the discrepancy betweenconstitutional and customary law and the accessibility of related facilities.

• Make gender policy effective.

• End social taboos against women and support social movements in favorof women’s rights.

• Take into account the diversity of women’s cultural, social and economicconditions and characteristics.

• Prioritize gender disaggregated data to identify gaps and needs for policyand program.

• Define productivity more broadly and recognize the share of women toeconomic activities.

• Establish effective quotas (at least 40%) for all public and private spheres.

• Provide childcare services. Provide facilities for reconciliation (family lifeand professional life). Work on the equal distribution of household andcaring tasks.

• Strengthen rural and local institutions’ abilities to become more gendersensitive in their analysis and programming.

• Revalue traditional farming systems that produce food.

INVEST IN WOMEN FARMERS

• Develop more effective partnership with multi-stakeholders (governments,

private sector, academics, producers and NGOs) to increase support forwomen farmers and their grass-root associations.

• Provide gender-sensitive credit and saving systems that support womenfarmers.

• Target investment to enhance women’s knowledge, training, innovation, &capacity building for decision-making, after having listened to women’sspecial needs and aspirations. Put special emphasis on their approachestowards sustainable development

• Provide educational support for girls and women through training facilities,

scholarships, extension services and other forms of technical assistanceclose to rural areas.



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• Provide access to low cost technology that is adapted to rural women’sneeds.

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Increase the number of women extension agents and train male extensionagents to become more gender-sensitive.

• Train women on improved management and administration of farms.

• Provide access to market information and research results on markets.

• Reduce intermediaries.

• Support to local and traditional financial systems.

• Revalue and innovate old technologies. Acknowledge existing labor-savingtechnologies.

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Promotion of alternative and more adapted techniques.• Education of rural women on climate change.

• Dissemination of systems of drinking water purification.

• Establish and strengthen adapted systems of risk management anddisaster prevention.

• Boost renewable rural electrification (solar, wind etc.)

• Prioritize women’s access to ICT.

PROMOTE WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP

• Facilitate rural women’s participation in all relevant decision-makingprocesses –at all levels- through mandatory quotas (at least 40%),leadership training, information sharing and visibility.

• Encourage and support associations of rural women in order to defendtheir practical and strategic interests.

• Support women’s cooperatives and their participation in mixedcooperatives.

• Provide multi-purpose spaces for meetings, activities of the organizationand cooperatives etc.

• Invest in women scientists and gender-based research in agriculture andrural development sector in developing countries.

• Engage grassroots women as advisors and informers on pertinent issuesthat relate to their rights.

• Developing action research that directly involves and allows forcontributions of the local communities.

• Conduct training and gender-based leadership programs employingvarious methodologies that include farmers’ exchange visits, study tours,learning and reflection sessions.



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• Work with women’s resiliency in food systems, responding to externalshocks.

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Empower women related to their financial capacities.

RECOMMENDATIONS TO CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS

• Raising awareness among women farmers about their rights. Educate andempower.

• Encourage the self-organization of women.

• Establish mandatory quotas (at least 40%) for women in CSO.

• Promoting the role of women - apart from being producers of food - asagents of development and change.

• Re-evaluate (traditional) peasant systems which produces food, butbearing in mind that there are persisting gender inequalities.

• Facilitate knowledge building of crop management.

• Support traditional systems of collection, conservation and distribution ofseeds.

• Compile success stories of women that can serve to inspire other womenin similar circumstances.

• Implement activities that increase individual and collective self-esteem.



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ACCESS TO RESOURCES


• Regulate, through laws and regulations, the different forms of ownershipand use of land as well as the access and handling of natural resources.They must favour the most marginalized and under-resourced, women,indigenous people, shepherds, traditional fishers, young people and ingeneral people who cultivate these lands or waters, taking into account theenvironment with special emphasis on traditional and ecologicallyvulnerable areas.

• Stop land grabbing. For this, establish national Moratoriums on huge landacquisitions or renting to governments, foreign or national companies, withthe aim of strengthening Family Farmers by giving them priority in terms of

access to land and water resources for the production of food for domesticconsumption. Analyze the effects of such massive transfers of land forFood Security and Food Sovereignty of peoples as well as for biodiversityand food diversity.

• Agricultural organizations will be pivotal in defending the right to access toresources and protection of producers against the concentration of landand resources.

• Encourage institutions to assign land and resources. Furthermore, they willcreate or formalise the property registers in a participative way which givesa legal base and protection to the tenure of the land. The procedures

should be simple, transparent and accessible for all the interested groupsin preventing greater land concentration.

• The process of access to and tenure of land as well as its legal protectionis included in the framework of a Comprehensive Agrarian Reform.

• In addition, customary regulations must been taken into account.Acknowledge communal ownership systems by regulating collective rightson land, waters, forests and seeds.

• Develop participatory strategies for managing natural resources favouringsmall farmers, based on traditional innovations and appropriate external

interventions. Focus on the respectful use of the natural resources(efficiency, conservation, recycling, ecological methodologies etc.).

• Encourage insurance systems against the damage of crops due to naturaldisasters.

• It is crucial to strengthen local institutional capacities and promote policiesthat improve the farmers’ access to training services, technology, logistics,infrastructure, production, processing, market advice etc. This requirespublic investment and cooperation between governments, internationalagencies, NGOs, the committed private sector, research people andorganised groups.



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FOR RESEARCH AGENTS AND OTHERS

• Translate the general ecological principles and the concepts on managingnatural resources into practical recommendations that respond directly tothe needs of the poor, and have an impact on the situation of small owners,taking into account local ecosystems.

• Incorporate eco-friendly perspectives into the new technologicalapproaches and combine knowledge and skills of the farmers with thosefrom external agents in such a way that appropriate farming techniquescan be developed and/or adapted. Emphasis must be placed onparticipative processes that involve the farmers in order to strengthen local

research and the population’s capacity to resolve their problems.

• Ensure democratic and egalitarian access to technological knowledgethrough training and cooperation between technicians and farmers.

• Research into the sustainable use of natural resources. Innovate atorganizational level in order to share resources and strategies thatpromote better management of available resources at lower cost.

• Creation of platforms for the exchange of experiences, empowerment.Share the land with young farmers in order to transmit knowledge fromgeneration to generation.



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ACCESS TO MARKETS

WORLDWIDE

• Create and consolidate mechanisms that imprint greater efficiency andtransparency to how the markets work, which will reduce situations ofuncertainty and panic.

• Restructure the market in favour of small producers in order to provide fairand stable prices for farmers. Markets led by commodity based groupswith community participation.

• Promote regional trade integration processes particularly in countriesand/or regions with very little or no integration.

• Trade agreements that prioritize Family Farming.

• Intensify the work to break down barriers and improve the infrastructure tocreate and broaden sustainable internal and regional food markets.

• External support from development institutions must have more of asustainable focus. Provide technical and economic assistance for lessdeveloped countries to develop their own agro-industry consolidatesrelations with the primary sector.

• Promoting ecological and sustainable production of food in order to reducethe vulnerability and the impacts derived from excessive use of fossil fuels.

AT NATIONAL LEVEL, DEMANDS TO THE GOVERNMENTS

• Give political priority to local food supply and value chains. Develop localmarkets. Put local production/proximity marketing in value.

• Implement policies of inventory (stock management).

• Establishing, when necessary, the due proportional customs protection, toavoid dumping or importing subsidized products that unduly damages localproductions.

• Institutional support with more sustainable business focus, facilitating alegal framework that strengthens the consolidation of rural associations ofproducers.

• Offering farmers opportune access to affordable long-term public andprivate consumables and loans without excessive guarantees, plus publicand private insurance instruments that cope with crop failure due to naturaldisasters, climate risks etc.

• Encourage public/private collaboration to consolidate strong, competitivelocal markets.

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Develop support systems for small producers so that they can obtain thegreatest profit from their crops by reducing pre and post-harvest losses as



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much as possible. Support work intended to improve food quality andsafety and reduce waste throughout the entire food chain by improvingfood handling, analyzing food, the processing equipment, techniques for

storage, cooling chain systems and the transport infrastructure.

• Encourage the implementation of processes, increasing the quantity andquality of production of small farmers and generating added value to localproducts. Design plans for diversified production to ensure that theproducers obtain several harvests per year and avoiding the de-capitalization of the household economy.

• Facilitating the implantation of services in the rural environment that permitoptimum development of the Agrarian Sector.

• Public investment for infrastructure development in rural areas.

• Modernization policy (subsidies) for young and women farmers.

• Promoting short commercialization circuits. The sensitivity of manyconsumers to the food that they consume is one way to promote theimplantation of short commercialization circuits. These circuits encourageboth food security (nutritional, quality), reduce the ecological impact(derived from reducing the use of fuels) and they are an effective means ofmaintaining levels of demand for farming products and therefore formaintaining producers whilst they analyze and set up new strategies (rural-urban).

• National programs to promote products from Family Farming such as theGovernment of Brazil's program to supply public canteens (schools,hospitals, etc.). In this respect, public-private collaboration is crucial.

• Provide an adequate environmental regulatory framework andmechanisms in order to guarantee the sustainable use of naturalresources.

IN TERMS OF PRODUCERS' ORGANIZATIONS

• Strengthening their capability to organize themselves is essential so that

they can take part in the decision-making processes and participateactively and efficiently in the markets, negotiation processes etc.

• Access to the right training permitting, on the one hand, improvements intheir competitiveness and their negotiation capability whilst also being ableto identify complementary and competitive activities to capitalize on thereal advantages of small producers (efficiency, sustainability, etc.).

• Encourage setting up processes to increase the quantity and quality ofproduction for small farmers and to generate added value to localproduction.

• Reduce commercial intermediaries and facilitate the direct contact

between producers and consumers.



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• Increase the support, coming from all sources, to improve marketinfrastructure and timely and reliable commercial information systems,including setting up and strengthening ties between the countryside and

the city; effective use of information and communication technologies.

• Provide information for farmers in order to advise regarding products andtheir marketing possibilities.

• Facilitating the provision of infrastructures, particularly for transport, plusaccess to other technologies (communication) that can reduce costs andreduce uncertainty regarding the markets. Precise information on how themarkets are working in real time reduces uncertainty and helps them to actappropriately.

• Re-value traditional crops. Transmit gastronomic heritage to children.

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