Dr Michael Njume Ebong
By Dr Michael Njume Ebong
The UN Decade of Family Farming 2019-2028 (UNDFF): On 20 December 2017 the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted Resolution A/RES/72/239 declaring 2019-2028 to be the United Nations Decade of Family Farming. The Resolution inter alia recalls that nearly 80 per cent of the extreme poor live in rural areas and work in agriculture, and that devoting resources to the development of rural areas and sustainable agriculture and supporting smallholder farmers, especially women farmers, is key to ending poverty in all its forms and dimensions and improving the welfare of farmers.
The Resolution calls upon the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) to lead the implementation of the Decade, in collaboration with other United Nations organizations.
As explained on its website: www.fao.org/family farming-decade ), the Decade aims to shed light on what it means to be a family farmer (otherwise also known as smallholder) in a constantly changing world context.
The Decade projects the role of family farming in reducing hunger and shaping the future of food in the world. As such, family farming provides the means, particularly in developing countries, to ensure food security, improve livelihoods, better manage natural resources, protect the environment and achieve UN Sustainable Development Goals
(UNSDGs) and their targets, especially those relating to food and agriculture, environmental protection and climate change. For these and other reasons, family farmers are considered to be the agents of change needed to care for the earth, achieve zero hunger, and a more balanced and resilient planet (UNDFF).
Definition and key facts: Family farming encompasses all family-based agricultural activities and it is an integral part of rural development. It includes agricultural, forestry, fisheries, pastoral and aquaculture production managed and operated by a family, relying predominantly on family labour, including both men and women.
The family and the farm are linked, co-evolve and combine economic, environmental, reproductive, social and cultural functions (FAO). As key facts, family farms number more than 600 million worldwide and produce more than 80% of the world’s food; they account for 90% of fishers operating on a small scale; occupy about 80% of farmland worldwide; and are run predominantly by an individual or a family relying primarily on family members. Furthermore, 33% of forests are managed by indigenous peoples and local communities (FAO/UNDFF).
The Global Action Plan (GAP) provides detailed guidance for the international community on national and multilateral actions that should be taken to support family farmers. To guarantee the success of the
UNDFF, the Global Action Plan requires that all actions should place family farmers at the centre and be implemented through bottom-up, participatory and inclusive processes. The Plan further recognizes the diversity of family farmers and recommends actions that are context-specific and adapted to regional, national, local socio-cultural and socio-economic conditions. Above all, the GAP revolves around seven mutually reinforcing pillars of action, as follows:
Pillar 1: Implement comprehensive and coherent policies, investments and institutional frameworks that support family farming at local, national and international levels; promote inclusive and effective governance mechanisms and timely and geographically relevant data for well-targeted policy design and implementation; guarantee sustained political commitment and adequate resourcing by state and non-state actors; and create and strengthen local, national and international cooperation in support of family
farming.
Pillar 2: Support youth and ensure the generational sustainability of family farming – ensure the youth have access to land and other natural resources, information, education, infrastructure and financial services; incentivize generational turnover in agriculture, fisheries and forestry; improve the capacity of young family farmers for innovation by connecting locally specific (traditional) knowledge with new solutions; and guarantee the participation of young farmers in markets and in policy processes.
Pillar 3: Promote gender equity in family farming and the leadership role of rural women by promoting equal opportunities for women to engage in family farming and in the rural economy; increasing women farmers’ access to natural resources, (re-)productive assets, information, infrastructure, financial services and markets; supporting women’s organization, self-empowerment, and capacity development processes and women’s autonomy and agency; promoting full participation in policy processes and public life for rural women and their organizations; eliminating violence against women and girls; and promoting knowledge- and experience-sharing among women to achieve political, social, cultural and economic progress towards gender equality.
Pillar 4: Strengthen family farmers’ organizations and capacities to generate knowledge, represent farmers and provide inclusive services in the urban-rural continuum by strengthening the capacity of family farmers’ organizations so that they are better able to serve their members and their communities; enhancing the technical expertise and capabilities of family farmers and their organizations, making it easier for them to access and provide farming and non-farming related services which contribute to sustainable livelihoods and landscapes; supporting organizations to become stronger, transparent and more inclusive, and more capable of taking collective action for innovative and fair solutions; and improving capacities and services related to ICTs to ensure that family farmers’ voices are heard.
Pillar 5: Improve socio-economic inclusion, resilience and well-being of family farmers, rural households and communities by ensuring that family farmers – particularly youth, women and their communities – have access to social protection, services and public goods in order to improve their standard of living and reduce vulnerability; improving family farmers’ access to and control of natural resources and productive assets, especially for youth, women, indigenous communities and landless people; increasing resilience and economic viability by encouraging sustainable and diversified production practices, innovations, and diverse and nutritious diets; and improving access to markets and income-generating opportunities for family farmers, particularly youth and women, in order to guarantee increased participation and adequate remuneration.
Pillar 6: Promote sustainability of family farming for climate-resilient food systems by increasing family farmers’ access to productive assets and services, in order to improve their sustainable and responsible management and use of natural resources; supporting family farmers in driving transition toward sustainable food production by improving their capacities to innovate and increase productivity in a sustainable manner, developing an inclusive market environment for family farmers which promotes short food supply chains and provides diversified and nutritious food, thus contributing to more sustainable food systems; improving the conditions of family farmers within inclusive and fair value chains, in particular for women, youth and their organizations, encouraging diversification and the production of nutritious food.
Pillar 7: Strengthen the multi-dimensionality of family farming to promote social innovations contributing to territorial development and food systems that safeguard biodiversity, environment and culture inter alia, by improving synergies between production systems (fisheries, aquaculture, forestry, crops, livestock); enhancing the different ecosystem services provided by family farmers; strengthening family farmers’ role in promoting social innovation and diversification of employment opportunities; improving interconnections between rural and urban areas; promoting innovative economic opportunities and market solutions to take advantage of the multi-dimensional services and goods provided by family farmers.
African context: According to FAO, family farms in Africa feed and employ two-thirds of the African population and work 62 percent of the land. About 95 percent of farms are smaller than 5 hectares and therefore account for the vast majority of farmland.
Family farmers cover the entire spectrum of food producers in Africa: from livestock to crop production and from staple food to cash crop producers, producing for both subsistence and local markets. They use mostly age-old traditional modes of farming – without mechanization, irrigation, fertilizers or commercial seed varieties. They however contribute significantly to ecosystem preservation and environmental protection. Yet, while family farmers in Africa are crucial for food security, now and in the future, they are nevertheless among the most marginalized and vulnerable in the world as they face incoherent policies and have insecure rights to resources. In this dismal context, the African youth see no future in agriculture. Moreover, the region accounts for more than half of the world’s total uncultivated arable land, and has more farmers than any
Other continent. And yet Africa imports more food per capita than other developing regions. Africa is also the most troubled by recurrent food crises and food insecurity, according to FAO data.
More crucially, Africa’s family farmers have for several consecutive decades been the least productive (per farmer and per hectare) in the world, which explains the paradox as to why the region has been unable to feed itself and achieve food sovereignty despite its relatively more arable land than exists elsewhere in the world, leading to dependence on massive food imports. This paradox also explains, to some extent, the controversial issue of African “land grab” by foreigners in search of arable land opportunities to feed a rapidly growing world population since Africa cannot feed itself and the world.
Cameroon context: In that dismal African template, the performance of Cameroon’s family farmers over the past decade for example is evidenced by the growth rate of Cameroon’s food imports since 1996 to the present, which have about exceeded each year the growth rate of total merchandise imports.
For the past five successive years for instance Cameroon’s fish imports alone have averaged 100 billion FCFA per annum.
The average annual growth rate of cereals production dropped from 10.5% to 6.1%; coarse grains from 10.9% to 5.4%; meat from 4.2% to 3.3%. With its blessed natural resource base and ecosystem possibilities, Cameroon should not be spending hundreds of billions each year to import food that can be produced locally by family farmers/smallholders to promote the social and economic betterment of the village population. Besides city-rural connectivity challenges, the other problems facing family farmers in Cameroon include: lack of improved seeds, mechanization, irrigation and farm inputs on a regular basis. As argued by this author in other articles on the same subject, the comprehensive development of Cameroon villages should be the entry-point for the modernization and expansion of smallholder agriculture.
Our villages need to recover their colourful cultural effervescence punctuated with harvest festivals of yesteryears. That is what will attract our numerous jobless youth now in the cities to agriculture. In other words, Cameroon’s agricultural revolution will have to be engineered in the in the villages, not in the cities.