FAO and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries launch new Training Centre for Sustainable Family Farming

FAO and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) have joined forces to boost food and nutrition security in their territories through strengthened sustainable family farming and agroecology development.

FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva announced a $400 000 cooperation programme which kicks-off with the creation of a new training centre headquarted in São Tomé and Príncipe to facilitate knowledge exchange and capacity building for technicians, farmer field school instructors and family farmers, with a special focus on increasing their participation in agroecology and family farming laws.

“We will not change food systems with technology, but instead we need to make changes in laws and in research,” Graziano da Silva said. FAO is supporting the new centre as a way of “opening a window in the Green Revolution cathedral, to plant the idea that a new and more sustainable and responsible production and consumption model is possible,” he added. The Green Revolution was able to prevent famine in the 1970s, “but has reached its limits and it is time to put in place different models to tackle rising hunger and obesity that the world suffers”, he added.

The new training centre will also foster capacity building in sustainable production, processing and storage technologies, as well as training for improved access to markets of added-value products such as cassava, coffee, cocoa, cashew, fish, meat, dairy products and fruit and vegetables.

The well-being of smallholders and family farmers in the CPLP, a group of nine countries, is fundamental for social cohesion, rural development, and ecosystem preservation.

That is why family farming and agroecology have a prominent role in the CPLP Regional Strategy for Food and Nutrition Security, adopted by its Heads of State and Government in 2012 to address the problem of hunger and malnutrition.

Original source: FAO
Published on 18 July 2019