Small-scale farming is the predominant model in many countries in the world. Smallholders, who are usually family farmers, are critical for ensuring food and nutrition security, but they face a range of challenges including access to production resources. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants is a policy that embraces all the key issues affecting small-scale farmers and therefore represents a useful instrument for the development of the relevant policies.
Earlier in January, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) co-organised a training with the Association of Peasants in Romania (EcoRuralis) which brought together representatives of academia, civil society organisations, agriculture ministries and other decision-makers from the ECA region. The purpose of the training was not only to raise awareness of the UN Declaration but mainly to improve the capacity of public officials with regard to the implementation of the provisions within the declaration.
Small but very important family farms
Smallholder farmers constitute the most food growers around the world. There are over 608 million small farms in the world which are mainly family farms (over 90%). Although a recent update states that small farms produce roughly one-third of the world’s food, in many countries small-scale farming is still the predominant model and this plays a crucial role in the country’s agriculture and rural development as well as the economy as a whole. For instance, these farms produce over 70% of the food calories in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and South and East Asia.
On the one hand, they play a key role in ensuring food security at a family level, in the preservation of rural livelihoods and in the development of rural areas. On the other hand, the farmers do not always have the required conditions to grow food or a decent life. Small holders represent 80% of the world’s hungry and 70% of the extremely poor.
What is UNDROP?
In 2018, “the UN General Assembly recognised the past, present and future contributions of peasants and rural workers to global food security, development and environmental conservation” by adopting the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) with the rights listed being human rights applied specifically to those people.
“UNDROP is an important milestone for small farmers as it sets out for the first time at the international level, several rights for small farmers including rights to natural resources in a sustainable way, including biodiversity and seeds, and gender equality. The next step is to translate this declaration into national policies and frameworks which would unlock sustainable transformation at the national level supporting countries to implement their SDGs and achieve a world without hunger while putting farmers back at the center of the food system,” stated Carolina Starr, FAO Agriculture Officer.
The UNDROP training
The UNDROP helps to shed light on all the key issues that affect small family farmers but what it is and how to work with it still remain unanswered questions for many.
In Turkey, between 23 and 25 January, a training was organised that brought together participants from Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Romania, Turkey, and Albania. The main topic was UNDROP and its integration into national policies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The event was organised within the framework of the FAO project, Enhancing policymaking on rural development and smallholder support through the UN Decade of Family Farming 2019-2028 (UNDFF).
The training provided the framework to guide the development of the policies that support the implementation of UNDROP. For instance, it was demonstrated how UNDROP and its provisions are related to agroecology which is the desired model of production among both small scale farmers and the UN Decade of Family Farming. For this purpose, the history and the context of the declaration were outlined by the representatives of peasant groups while the representatives of the FAO Regional Office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia showed what they have been specifically working on that can help countries to implement the declaration. For instance, The 10 Elements of Agroecology is a food systems approach that can help to support smallholder farmers in many different ways as these echo several provisions of the declaration including those on knowledge, human and social rights, and the right to biodiversity. Another practical example is the National Action Plan for Family Farming which has been under development in some countries such as Portugal, Albania, and Moldova and has been already approved in Kyrgyzstan. These plans “constitute concrete mechanisms to further sustainable food production, rural development, the fight against rural poverty, the preservation of biodiversity, the safeguarding of culture, and ultimately, the future of sustainable food security for humanity”.
The next step to further clarify the declaration and the ways to implement it will be events at the national level to identify opportunities within the specific local context and to bring together all the relevant stakeholders for the development of policies for smallholders and family farms.
