Conference was the closing activity around the "International Year of Family Farming"

Few weeks before the end of 2014, declared by the UN as "International Year of Family Farming", the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on Thursday (4/12) attended a conference on "Family Farming and Development in Mozambique". The event, jointly organized with the Rural Development Observatory (OMR) and the National Farmers’ Union (UNAC) brought together representatives both from the Government and from farmers’ associations.

At the conference opening, FAO Representative in Mozambique, Castro Camarada, recalled that the goal of the "International Year of Family Farming" throughout the last 12 months has been to increase public awareness on family farming as well as on smallholder farmers and their important role in "eradicating hunger and poverty, guaranteeing food and nutrition security, improving livelihoods, managing natural resources and protecting the environment for sustainable development especially in rural regions".

The "International Year of Family Farming" 2014 aimed to reposition family farming in the centre of agricultural, environmental, and social policies in national agendas, identifying gaps and opportunities to promote change towards more equitable and balanced development. "When we look at the economic and agrarian structure of Mozambique, where this sector predominates", Camarada added, "we see that all these aspects are relevant in the national context".

Nonetheless, smallholder farmers and family farmers still face various challenges like "urbanization and ageing of the rural population", FAO Representative in Portugal, Hélder Muteia, said. Past solutions like the expansion of croplands or the green revolution looked for in the past in order to achieve food availability do not work anymore today because "on the one hand, the current potential of extension does not exceed 20 percent and, on the other hand, because the green revolution, by replacing human work with machines, did not take environmental sustainability into account".

What current solutions to guarantee such sustainability of agriculture and development are there and how to support the sector and promote nutritional education were some of the subjects debated at the conference. "There is no doubt about the importance of family farming." Among the reasons pointed out in his intervention on "Policies and Ideologies of Family Farming", the Executive Director of OMR, João Mosca, mentioned job creation, food production, environmental conservation, and development. However, the level of agricultural productivity in Mozambique remains "very low" and insufficient to eradicate poverty. According to Mosca, "structural transformation like the creation of conditions for other sectors to absorb agricultural production, job creation in this and other areas and agricultural diversification are needed".

Also according to Castro Camarada, "Mozambique is having an important moment from an economic perspective" with high growth rates. However, FAO Representative in Mozambique concluded, "if we look at development in a broad sense with the goal of improving human condition and according to data on rural poverty", he said, it is easy to understand that the country’s development "is intrinsically related to rural development and specifically to the development of agriculture, agribusiness and a whole series of related subsectors".

The conference on "Family Farming and Development" was one of the activities around the "International Year of Family Farming" as part of a broad discussion and cooperation at national, regional and global levels that aim at improving the consciousness and understanding of the challenges faced by family farmers and helping identify efficient ways of supporting them.