Call for articles: Family farmers in living landscapes

Deadline: June 15th, 2014 Farming Matters | 30.1 | March 2014 “Landscapes” come in different shapes and sizes: mountainous areas, drylands, forests, coastal areas, watersheds, and many more. They are always changing, and so are the strategies of the people living in them. Growing pressures on the land lead to competing claims for resources, within … Read more

Editorial – A wake-up call

Half way through the International Year of Family Farming, in many parts of the world, family farmers are celebrating and discussing their future with policy makers and civil society. But most poor rural communities struggling for their daily survival continue to be unaware of even the existence of such a year. The IYFF is intended … Read more

What our readers say

At the start of 2014, we asked you to give us feedback on Farming Matters, and we thank all those hundreds of you who responded. You have helped by providing us with findings that are a useful resource for both reflection and action. To inform our future strategies and keep satisfying your needs, we asked … Read more

Theme overview – Moving from vulnerability to resilience in Africa

In August 2012, the Seidu family had to cope with the bad harvest. Like many farming families in northern Ghana, they had to adopt the ‘one-zero-one’ strategy for the children and the ‘zero-zero-one’ strategy for themselves. ‘One’ represents a meal, ‘zero’ is no meal. So during the lean season, their four children had breakfast in … Read more

THE MANY FACES OF RESILIENCE

Farming Mattters | 30.2 |June 2014 Farming Matters issue 30.2 shows how farmers have experimented, adapted, and improved their resilience to one or more of these shocks. Examples include the development of informal markets for farm produce, making better use of traditional knowledge, and diversifying farming systems with bees and trees. Governments can also assist … Read more

Opinion: A systems approach against poverty

Why is poverty deepening in Africa even when millions of dollars continue to be poured in to alleviate it?, asks Million Belay. He answers by highlighting how we need to promote agroecology, treat agriculture as a system, and move away from green revolution approaches. Insanity, Albert Einstein once said, is doing the same thing again … Read more

How Yapuchiris build climate resilience

Dealing with the uncertainties of changing climates is a challenge faced by farmers around the world. Near Cochabamba in Bolivia’s Andean high plateau, a group of agroecological farmers are leading the way by developing and sharing innovative practices that help their communities break out of the vicious cycle of increased poverty and vulnerability. But challenges … Read more

The world’s largest safety net for family farmers?

India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is the largest public-works based employment programme in the world. Unanimously enacted by the Indian parliament in 2005, implementation began in February 2006. With an annual budget of six billion US dollars, it now supports some fifty million rural people – larger than the population of … Read more

Peasant to peasant: The social movement form of agroecology

After the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in 1990, former land owners returned to Nicaragua from the USA. They began to take back their former estates through legal and less than legal manoeuvering, driving many rural people off the land they had been cultivating. This ‘agrarian counter-reform’ as it became known, left many hundreds of … Read more

Locally rooted: Ideas and initiatives from the field

Cultivating resilience is a practice that we see arising in many corners of the world. A seed is sown, it is watered and tended, and a stronger farming system emerges. Here, from four different continents, we see diverse examples of such development and how they are helping family farmers. Brazil: Alliances for agroecological transition In … Read more