Seventy percent of food worldwide is produced by smallholders, including family farms and private households. Connecting those small producers to processing facilities and markets can be a challenge but it is possible, as an international conference in Astana last week made clear.

In Kazakhstan, the country’s 1.6 million private households and 175,000 private farms are playing a crucial role in ensuring national food security: about half of all food is produced by smallholders, 70 percent in the case of animal products. To support the efforts of national governments in Central Asia to link up smallholders with processors and markets, FAO in Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation held an International Conference on “Development of Inclusive Agrifood Chains,” on 20 July in Astana, presenting the Russian and Kazakh experiences.