If you are reading this website, you might be familiar with one of the larger debates going on around ensuring access to food for everyone--the debate on the future of agriculture as a practice. Fossil-fuel based?  Organics? Small-scale? Fertilizer dependent? This debate lives in the comment sections of many websites that cover these topics, in social media threads, in scientific literature, and pages and pages of books and brochures published every day. It is a rich and colorful debate, with many different approaches proposed. But how do we ensure we are hearing perspectives from all...

Waking up at 4:00 am and walking almost 5 kilometers to work at the farm is not an easy task for grown people, let alone for a school girl. Lydia Sasu has been working as a farmer since her childhood. Despite hard work by all the family members, there were instances that they had nothing to eat. “On my school days, on a Saturday, I and my mother went to the market to get money for cassava we sold on credit a few days ago, but the customer had no money to pay so we could...

Heads of State and Government of African Union Member States, together with representatives of international organizations, civil society organizations, private sector, cooperatives, farmers, youths, academia and other partners have unanimously adopted a Declaration to end hunger in Africa during the high-level meeting co-organized by the African Union, FAO and Lula Institute held in Addis Ababa last week. The declaration aims at promoting sustainable agricultural development with social protection and recognizes the importance of engaging non-state actors to ensure food security. The 3-day meeting allowed for non-state actors and governments alike to discuss and exchange their views and positions on agricultural development in...

An approach to development centred on hunger eradication In the 1930s, Josué de Castro reached the conclusion that hunger in Brazil was the consequence of distortions created by an economic development model that exploited the poor, effectively excluding them from enjoying its benefits. By the end of the 20th century, Brazil’s economy was growing fast, but the gap between rich and poor was widening and 44 million of the country’s 170 million people were caught in a hunger trap. They were too poor to buy the food they needed for a healthy life and so were denied the opportunity of participating in Brazil’s growing prosperity. Zero Hunger...

A side event at the 12th Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York brought together a panel of FAO experts, indigenous peoples leaders from Asia and Latin America and the Government of Philippines. The panellists presented the critical linkages between the Voluntary Guidelines on tenure, and how inclusive tenure of land, fisheries and forests is at the core of family farming. Quoting Victoria Tauli-Corpuz from the Asian Indigenous Caucus” Indigenous peoples have been doing family farming for millennia, for generations. Indeed whether through communal or family management of the natural resources, family farming is...