Numerous activities have been planned this year to celebrate the International Year of Quinoa, and we are now preparing for the International Year of Family Farming. Both events serve to raise awareness about the need to protect and strengthen Latin America's traditional agricultural production systems and promote them among governments and international organizations to ensure they become a political priority. These traditional systems contribute directly to the food security and incomes of millions of small-scale farmers and their families in Latin America and the Caribbean who, in turn, make it possible for millions of people in the region to have access to vegetables, meat products and fish on their tables.

I would like to bring attention to the need and importance of dialogue within the food production sector. Today more than ever it is crucial to adopt a more systemic approach to the development of policies aimed at creating an enabling environment to ensure greater and more sustainable agrifood production in the countries throughout the region.

Ecosystems that support food production are areas with biophysical and climatic conditions that extend beyond politically accepted borders. Numerous human activities coexist within them, each of them sharing the natural resources contained within them. The territorial nature of these environmental and social processes is gradually being acknowledged and taken into consideration when planning and developing policies.

However, the institutional structure and policies that involve family farming are still being designed in an isolated manner. For example, farmers carry out livestock and/or aquaculture activities in their own agri-productive plots, integrating natural vegetable, poultry, livestock and fish production as well as fruit or wood producing trees in a somewhat natural way with the use of water, land, energy, ecosystemic services, nutrients, while sharing infrastructure, capital and markets. Furthermore, the diversification of family farming production, even if it is at a small scale, is a strategy to increase family farm agricultural and livestock production and offset risks.

Thus, it is important to reassess the consultative and participatory policy-making process for family farming, which must arise from inter-sectorial dialogue and institutions. Multiple stakeholders must be involved in the implementation of a territorial approach and in any discussions involving governance issues. The multi-sectorial approach in policymaking and the development of food production mechanisms is not only convenient but also natural.