Mexico has almost 5.5 million rural production units classified as small-scale family-based agriculture. These production units are recognized as places where you can find abandoned plots, old plantations and producers, monocultures, eroded soils, very low productivity, excessive and misused chemical fertilizers, loss of biodiversity, dependence on external products for food, lack of opportunities and alternatives for development, migration, and cultural erosion, populations exposed to illicit activities, public health problems due to the consumption of junk foods, lack of technologies appropriate to the conditions of the small producer, and poor transference of available technology. This situation translates into an environment where poverty seems inevitable.

Nevertheless, nowadays, it is recognized that family farming can play an important role for the generation of food by optimizing family work in rural areas, boosting local and territorial economies, and contributing to better management of the environment and biodiversity. 

An example of this can be found in the experience developed in the state of Chiapas by groups of producers from different localities of 14 municipalities, accompanied by a civil society organization with the support of a few government institutions that have united efforts for its implementation. In five years of work, the efforts have begun to show results.