Dear contributors,
The e-consultation on ‘Social farming (also called care farming): an innovative approach for promoting women’s economic empowerment, decent rural employment and social inclusion. What works in developing countries?’ is now over and I would like to thank you all for the ideas, insights, experiences shared to enrich our discussion.
We received 46 contributions from 24 countries: Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Ethiopia, France, Gabon, Hawaii, India, Indonesia, Italy, Jamaica, Mexico, Nepal, New Zealand, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and the United States of America.
The consultation helped us gain a better understanding of how the term social (or care) farming is known outside of academic circles that have been studying this farming practice.
We recognize that what we mean by social/care farming may not be so clear and that the term can be interpreted very broadly. We hope that the methodological approach and the country implementation framework we are elaborating will define social/care farming more clearly. This will help practitioners and policy makers recognize and promote it.
We appreciate the concrete examples of social farming in action that have been shared with us by Gemma Todd (Tanzania), Simone Staiger (Colombia) and Magda Rich (India), among others.
We are also grateful for those who contributed methodological notes. These will be valuable for further defining the concept paper and the Rapid Social Farming Appraisal Framework.
We will be in touch with you to further discuss aspects of social/care farming as we go ahead with our analysis and the preparation of the country implementation framework.
In the meantime, we will retain your comments for others to read and look forward to your engagement on future themes. A summary of the key points from the discussion which highlights the case studies will be made available on the FSN forum website.
Many thanks,
Hajnalka Petrics
Hajnalka Petrics